


Country Road

by soranokumo



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Canon - Original Game, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-05-31
Updated: 2005-05-30
Packaged: 2017-10-19 06:10:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 74,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soranokumo/pseuds/soranokumo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For this work I've chosen not to apply AO3's standard warnings. It's Cloud's story prior to the start of the game, and there is sex and violence involved against a character who is, by many standards, a minor.
> 
> Though I don't tend to go into extreme graphical description of either the sexual or violent acts in this particular fanfic, there are certainly sections of this fanfic that might be considered triggery. Please be aware.

The high mesa formed a perfect place to survey the surrounding territory. His superior officer ordered camp to be struck while he stood at the northern edge, looking at the valley, to the river that marked where desert turned again to greenery, and farther north than that, a long black ridge, like the spine of a dragon.

He turned as his commander approached, adjusting his gloves. When the wind blew strong, it blew the man's black coat and long silver hair behind him, light against dark, enough to distract him until his commander stood beside him.

"What is it?"

"Sir?"

"You're on edge."

He turned to look north again, eyes following the path they would be taking to reach the black mountains. "It's been a long time since I've gone back... there."

"Nibelheim?"

"Yes, sir. It's my hometown."

"Hometown... I see."

The baritone was smooth as always, but there was a slight intonation of consideration, curiosity. When he looked back at his commander, he expected to see him looking at the path just as he had been, following their path north, planning out things ahead, as they always did. Instead, he found his commander looking at him, the pale green gaze as immovable as jade, but aglow with a light that mere stone could never hold.

Military training failed him. The name slipped past his lips before he could stop it. "Sephiroth--"

***

A bang nearby Cloud's head woke him up so quickly that he thought, for a few seconds in between sleep and consciousness, that their camp had been ambushed--but no, he wasn't on a mission, he was still there in the bed of the old truck. Another hitchhiker, sitting on the other side, smirked at him as he sat up and a gruff voice shouted from the front.

"Oi! We're here already! Get out!"

"We're going, old man!" the other youth shouted back, standing up and grabbing his own bag of things. He had to stand hunched over--the roof over the bed was low and the kid was, like everyone else, taller than Cloud--but still walked to Cloud's side to give him a helping hand up. "Hey, you oughta be more careful. Falling asleep in fronta strangers like that. Ain't healthy."

Cloud bit back a response and ignored the helping hand, struggling to his own feet, with his own meager bag of possessions in hand. He concentrated on his feet, planting one in front of the other, until he reached the back, where he ignored the hitchhiker's offer of help again to clamber over the back of the truck. He turned away from sight before breathing a sigh of relief to be back on firm ground, and then got out of the way of the dustcloud as the truck drove on.

The road stretched out like forever in front of him, a strip of paleness running along the thick green, which began to rise in gentle hills. In the distance were the mountains, and somewhere in that direction lay home.

"Right," he breathed, then turned around to look at something completely different from everything he had ever seen.

Costa del Sol seemed planted right on the beach, a city settled on the sand dunes. Even though he wasn't right at the city yet, he could see the umbrellas and people along the beach, and even more importantly, he could see the ships at the dock. The Shinra cargo ships were massive beside the smaller commercial vessels, and all of them bore the red, clefted Shinra diamond. He stared, his grip tightening around the old canvas of his bag.

"Talking in your sleep. It ain't healthy."

He turned his head, looking at the other boy, so much taller and darker than he was, from Corel. Another mountain town, certainly, but they couldn't have been more different.

 _You're just like the other boys from Nibelheim._ Cloud looked back at Costa del Sol, shrugged. "It doesn't matter."

"Does if you're mumbling bout the Great Sephiroth," the boy said, slinging his own bag over his shoulder. "Talk bout him in your sleep in the city, and they'll start talking bout you. Where we're going, they will. I mean, you're enlisting too, right?"

"Maybe," Cloud mumbled. He started for the city's gates, and tossed back over his shoulder, "Good bye."

He'd seen the smirk, he knew the type. Despite how friendly the other boy tried to be, he had other things on his mind. Cloud shoved him from his thoughts and wondered, instead, how he was going to afford fare to cross the ocean.

Or how he was going to survive crossing the ocean. As soon as he managed to find a spot out of sight from the other boy, he squatted down behind a couple of bushes and threw up. A splash of water from a canteen to wash out his mouth, and then he decided he'd forgo food until he secured a spot on the ship, which would hopefully keep him from throwing up again. What he saw when he entered the city proper didn't raise his spirits. Watching all of the tall, muscular, tanned people running about the place made him feel uneasy--it wasn't that they were tall, or that they were muscular, or that they were tanned, it was that he was short, skinny, and so pale he thought he could already feel a burn coming on. He felt a few stares, and when he ducked into the shade, he heard a couple of ladies giggle. It hadn't been quite so bad at Corel, but then, the people at Corel hadn't been running around in what looked like a live movie shoot.

 _A swimwear commercial_ , he amended, sitting down against the side of a building near the beach and staring out at the port. _A swimwear commercial. Or_ \--his face burned as another group of women passed him, both old enough to be his mother-- _a lingerie commercial._ It wasn't his fault. The only place he had seen a television in Nibelheim had been at the inn, and even still, no one ever watched a channel with women parading about in their underwear. Not in front of the children, anyway.

Tifa had mentioned seeing things on television. But then, her father was the mayor, so to her and her friends, television had been a normal thing.

He remembered wandering into the inn to ask if he could watch the news, once. It was near the end of the Wutai War. The reception hadn't been so good, as the broadcast had come all the way from Midgar, and that was after it had all been filtered by the Shinra, or so his mother had told him. But even though the screen got blurry a few times, he had seen--not enough, but at the time he couldn't have asked for more. He hadn't managed that until the night he told his mother he wanted to join SOLDIER.

"Maybe I asked for too much," he mumbled, watching as a group of children ran to the beach, the adults following lazily behind.

It had started well enough. He had been enthusiastic about leaving Nibelheim, leaving everything inside of it behind him. He only regretted leaving his mother, and even then, when he had first left, he had still held the warmth of her last hug clear in his memory. By now the warmth had faded, and so had the enthusiasm. Reality had settled in before he had even reached Gongaga. It had been hard to ignore, after several days of motion sickness on end. He had found medication for it, but that had run out south of Corel, and he had to ration out what money he had left until he enlisted.

The thought of it prodded him up. He sat up, looked again toward the giant Shinra cargo ships. He rummaged in his canvas bag, pulled a cracked leather wallet out from among some folds of clothes, and opened it inside of the bag so no one could see what he was doing. He counted up the gil, bit his lip, closed it all and slung his bag over his shoulder.

He found the busiest dock, stood for a moment watching the bustling of the sailors and laborers switching out crates of cargo, and finally spotted a sailor ordering another group around. He ducked around a bunch of crates, avoiding the rush of activity, and came up behind the man.

"Scuse me, sir?"

The sailor jumped, turned around and glared straight over Cloud's head before dropping his gaze to see him.

"What do you want, kid?"

He pointed to the ship. "I need to get to Junon."

The man raised his eyebrows. "We're not a passenger ship, kid. Go bother someone else."

"Please? I might not look it, but I can work." The man started to turn around, and Cloud bit his lower lip before blurting, "I have money. I can pay."

"You're gonna pay?" the sailor said, looking at him doubtfully. "With what? Hick money? Moonshine?" He paused, looking at him consideringly. "Actually, moonshine wouldn't be so bad, but it doesn't look like you've got a drop on you. Too young, even for a hick."

Cloud blinked. "It's not hick money. It's gil. How much?"

"How much do you got?"

"Enough."

"You tell me how much you're offering, then I'll tell you if it's enough."

"One hundred gil."

"For that much, kid, I might let you kiss my ass."

"Two hundred gil."

The man's expression changed, for some reason. It wasn't much, just a slight cock of the head, a sudden leer to his smile. Cloud knew that kind of smile, and his fingers tightened around his bag.

"Heh. I can see you really want to go. You really need to get to Junon, huh, kid?"

"Two hundred gil," Cloud repeated.

"Two hundred if you'll do a little favor when we reach the other side. There's some guys on the ship I owe."

"Two hundred fifty."

"Not biting, huh?"

He just kept staring at the sailor. By now, some of the others had noticed, and some of the milling around had drifted closer. The man in front of him turned around and snapped at them to get back to work while he concluded business, and one of them shouted something back that made him laugh. Finally, he looked back at Cloud and held out his hand.

"Three hundred and you've got a spot in the cargo hold."

Cloud put down his bag, used the motion to hide a sigh of relief, and started to pull out the gil when he hesitated, looked up at the man. "No favors," he said.

"Eh." The sailor shrugged. "I guess not. Gimme the money, kid, I've got work to do." He counted the bills Cloud handed him, grinned when he shoved it into his pocket. "I'll have one of the boys take you aboard. Whatever happens, you better stay the hell out of the captain's sight. Got that?" Without waiting for his answer, he turned his head and shouted again. One of the junior sailors jogged up and they muttered together, before the officer went back to ordering the others and the junior sailor looked at Cloud.

"Well, hurry up," he said over his shoulder, hurrying toward the cargo bay. Cloud followed after him.

***

The cargo hold had held its fair share of stowaways, Cloud discovered, when the sailor led him to one of the corners of the hold. Some crates had been arranged to form a wall between the side of the ship and the rest of the hold, and something that looked suspiciously like a hastily rinsed out piss pot lay on its side in one of the corners. An old flashlight lay in the other.

"It's not like the captain doesn't know it happens," the sailor explained as he watched Cloud gingerly stand the pot up straight. "It's just, you know, so long as he doesn't see it, he doesn't have to report it. So we've got rules. First, he can't see you. Second, you're not allowed to go anywhere until night falls, and even then, first night you wait until someone comes to get you, because I sure as hell doubt you've ever been on a ship before. Better toss your shit then, because we don't toss it for you." He stopped, thinking, then nodded. "Right. You got food, kid?"

Cloud shook his head. "Just, umm, some old... old stuff. Bread."

"How much did you pay Caliban?"

"Three... three hundred."

"Three hundred? Son of a bitch." He glared back over his shoulder. "Getting stingy. Well, look, I'll bring back some food once a day, too. We get shit, but some shit's better than no shit. Oh, and do you've got a canteen?" Cloud nodded, and he held out his hand. "I'll get it filled up. How old are you, kid?"

Cloud said nothing, and handed him the canteen. "Thank you, sir," he mumbled, and the sailor frowned.

"Son of a bitch," he repeated, turning and walking away. "We don't take runaways, that's a rule."

"I'm not," Cloud said, and the man stopped and looked back at him.

"You're not what? Twelve?"

"I'm fourteen," Cloud said.

"Still a kid," the sailor replied. "Look, kid, I don't want to know why you're running away to Junon, but you'd better be careful." He paused, then said, "The name's Ferdinand. Don't go with anyone unless they tell you that I sent em."

Cloud just nodded, watched as Ferdinand walked away with an ease in his step that Cloud was momentarily jealous for--his stomach lurched along with the ship, and he clasped a hand over his stomach, stepping back until he hit the wall of crates and slumping to the floor. He shuddered, shut his eyes for a moment, but it didn't help.

It got worse once the ship started moving, but he occupied himself with something he had brought with him from home. He sat with the flashlight in one hand, his old scrapbook on the floor, his other hand still clutching his stomach unless he needed to turn the page. The book was old, and like the wallet, the cover was nothing more than old leather. He couldn't even remember where he had dug it out from, but he remembered trying to air it out for a few days. His hands shook as he leafed through the newspaper pages he had slid within the plastic sheaths, the newspaper itself in bad enough shape by the time it reached Nibelheim, but the plastic was stained and that lent the newspaper a sepia tint. But it was strangely precious to him, had been since he had first started keeping it. His mother had been quietly amused, at first, he could remember... but she had never said no, had even laid out some pages ready for him when he got home, to add to the collection. He was surprised, but one day she had smiled at him and turned away, and he remembered something she had murmured during that one week when everything had been frightening and he hardly left his bed.

 _"Everyone needs something to believe in."_ The unspoken addendum to that, as she had looked out the window at the old water tower, had been just as important. _Everyone needs something to blame._

He turned the pages to his favorite, the one with the smudged black-and-white photograph from the article about the Wutai Peace Treaty. He smiled, the motions of the vessel forgotten for a moment as his finger brushed the caption beneath the picture, ran over a single name. It was something to believe in.

***

Ferdinand had been good to his word, about the canteen, about the food, about sending help down. Unfortunately, he had been good about everything--the water tasted like metal, the food tasted like shit, and some of the sailors while he walked above deck snickered at him while he passed. That only became worse when he had run to the side and thrown up, and then the looks went either one of two ways: pity, or the leer. He avoided both, when he could, but Ferdinand was impossible to avoid and he needed the man's help; Ferdinand was the one who brought the food and water, and none of the other sailors did.

Caliban all but disappeared. Ferdinand said he wasn't that high up on the chain, but he acted like it and never got the evening shifts, so that was why Cloud never had to worry about him. It was probably for the best, and secretly, Cloud was glad. He didn't trust Ferdinand, for all his pity, and he didn't trust Caliban, for all of his leering... but if it came between the two, he'd take the pity over the leering. He had had enough of that in Nibelheim, and those memories were sharper than the ones of his mother--they stayed clearer longer, while he struggled to remember that warmth. He felt himself growing colder and he couldn't imagine how anywhere could be colder than Nibelheim, cold enough to leech it out of him.

He occupied himself with daydreams. He wondered about Tifa, he remembered her in her cornflower blue dress, the one her mother had made for her. But whenever he thought of her, it was very hard not to think of the promise and how cold that night had been, for that late time in spring, or worse, the other boys in the town. He tried to imagine coming back as a Soldier... but that often led his thoughts somewhere else, and that always brought him back to where he was. Stuck on the ship.

***

The week while Tifa was in a coma, the bullies--the entire town--ignored him. He was used to being ignored, but this was somehow much worse... it was the complete refusal to acknowledge his presence at all. After the fifth time he tried to buy something from the general store and getting not so much as a glance from the shopkeeper, who either began ordering his part time worker girl around or chatting with another customer who had already bought something or studying the same page on the newspaper, he had left all the supplies at the store and ran home. His mother was stricken when he ran in and slammed the door, face red, smudged tears on his cheeks. She had had to go herself, after trying to hold him, trying to embrace him, and at first all he had wanted was to scream, but she had whispered in his ear and something about that made him calm down. She told him what to do if the pot looked ready to boil over, and left tying a shawl about her shoulders. When she came back, she found the kitchen just fine, but Cloud remained curled up on his bed in the same position she had left him in.

He had glanced up at her, and she had looked at him then with such eyes. The sadness had hurt, hurt him badly enough that he turned away onto his other side and shut out the sunlight from the window.

"It will be all right, Cloud," she had said, and he could hear the crinkling of the grocery bags beneath her hands. Why did she sound so young and so old at the same time? "It will. I promise."

The week had passed, and Tifa recovered. The town remembered him, remembered him and made sure to let him know just how they thought of him.

He had never come home bleeding so badly before. Worse, the adults completely looked the other way... and one night, one of them had even been the one behind the beating.

That was the week he had seen the first photograph in the newspaper.

***

It was the third night on the ship when he woke with a start, realized he felt better. He had never felt emptier, but the sleep had calmed his stomach. He forced himself to stand up, to go walking. He went up to the deck, rocking slightly on his feet. The sailors on duty ignored him, let him go on his way. More than likely, they thought he was about to vomit over the railing again.

He ignored them, too, and first looked up at the sky. It was clear, and blue, and speckled with so many stars. He let himself get lost in it, the motion of the ship no longer something so upsetting, and had smiled for a moment. Then he heard a low rumbling, something not from the ship's engines, and he watched as an airship went hurtling overhead, faster than he could believe. He followed it with his gaze, ran to the railing to watch as it shot over the ocean... and realized there were lights over the water. More than the stars, brighter, closer, and clustered on a thick band of darkness on the horizon.

"Sight for sore eyes," said a sailor nearby, smoking.

"Only the first couple times. Then you get used to it." His buddy lit up his cigarette, and after taking a drag, he laughed. "It ain't the prettiest, but damn, I live for that first night at Junon."

"Oh, yeah. The booze--"

"The women. You don't even have to sneak downstairs to flip a skirt."

"Hey, Midgar's not so bad--"

"Sure, but Junon ain't Midgar. Better take what you can get, yeah?"

The two continued chatting, but Cloud crossed his arms on the railing, rested his chin on it. The ship didn't seem to rock so much. His stomach grumbled. He stared at the cluster of lights and wondered, felt the sea breeze in his hair and tasted the sea salt on his lips. He let himself smile, a small one, unseen in the dark.

Junon was right there.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

A hand touched his shoulder and he jolted awake, scrambling backwards and staring, gulping down air only to see Ferdinand blinking at him, squatting and arm outstretched.

"Shit, kid. You all right?"

Cloud looked around, quickly taking in everything around him, realizing that the cargo hold looked different--there was pale light coming in over the crates. He stared at Ferdinand, swallowed and nodded.

"Were you having a nightmare?" Ferdinand asked, standing up, but Cloud said nothing, shook his head and reached for his bag, which he had been using as his pillow. "Cat got your tongue?"

"Tired," Cloud mumbled, and gripped his bag tighter to keep his hands from shaking. He slung it over his shoulder, and looked at the sailor. "That's all."

"If you say so." Ferdinand shrugged, then turned around. "Hurry up. They've moved most of it, so the captain's no longer watching. Now's your time to go. And stay the hell out of Caliban's sight, too, if you can--he still has you in mind for something."

Cloud hurried behind the sailor, and they were soon out on the dock. Ferdinand glanced back over at him and gestured behind another line of crates towards the mainland, and Cloud nodded before ducking behind the crates and scrambling on out. Even if he hadn't liked Ferdinand, he still felt guilty for being unable to thank him--but then he stumbled out from behind the crates and onto a Junon street.

Junon faced the west, and it was early enough in the morning that the sun's rays hadn't crested the cliffs and airport high above. The giant gun they had built for the Wutai War jutted out from the side of the cliff, the barrel reaching part out over the water, pointing away to the west, toward home. He stared back over the ocean, saw nothing but waves all the way out to the horizon, no strips of land, no anything. He was amazed, at first, that he could not see any sign of Costa del Sol... any sign of the western continent, any sign of the mountains that had always been his landmarks. Then he realized that he had done it. He had crossed the ocean; he was in Junon. He whirled back around, biting his lower lip to keep his excitement from showing.

Junon was not a beautiful city. Farther down the docks the metal turned to clumsy, ugly rocks, and he thought he could see old fishing boats, delapidated buildings. He turned away from that, and looked up instead, at what had become a Shinra fortress as well as a city. The cliff walls had been built up with metal, and the city rose in tiers, capped off with the airport. He could hear more engines starting, high above--more airships, no doubt. The tallest building, the one built behind the gigantic gun, had a short tower lined with windows, in the Shinra fashion, and on its side was emblazoned the Shinra logo.

Down here on the docks, most of the activity were by Shinra sailors or soldiers, most of which were patrolling, marching in pairs. He knew better than to bother them, and looked desperately for someone else he could ask, and finally saw a group of men in fatigues, standing out on one of the empty docks, smoking and laughing. He started for them, then stopped, realized there were five of them and only one of him.

He took a step back, then turned and decided he'd go into the city. Maybe he'd ask a shopkeeper.

***

Up until Costa del Sol, the cities he had been to were simple enough. He'd been able to find shops and inns and stations or pit stops for travelers easily enough, and Costa del Sol he hadn't stayed in long enough to allow the size to confuse him.

Junon, however, was a real city. When he reached the second tier, the shopkeepers had all opened their doors and the workers were out. Cars drove about the streets, sometimes jeeps or trucks carrying Shinra troopers. He never saw anyone wearing the insignia of SOLDIER, however, and it seemed most of the military personnel were going to another part of the base. The shopkeepers had young girls and women standing outside of their doorways, calling to passerby to enter the shop; one or two of the youngest ones actually called out to him, "Hey, boy! Boy! We have toys in here!" He ignored them, and hurried past the closed doors for the places with the blackened windows. His mother had warned him about those.

He finally found his way up to the enlisting office on the fourth level, close to one of the lower entrances to the airport. The office itself had seen better days, with tattered carpet and faded photographs hanging on the walls, but the front desk itself seemed neat and orderly. There was a receptionist fiddling with something behind it, and Cloud walked up to it and waited for her to finish.

She did, turned around and blinked at him. He couldn't help but think her face looked like it had been painted on. "Yes?" she said, raising an eyebrow. "Something I can help you with, little boy? We don't page parents."

"I'm fourteen," he said. "I want to enlist."

"You want to enlist." Both eyebrows were raised, now. "Aren't you a little short to be a trooper?"

"I don't want to enlist as a trooper," Cloud said. "I want to enlist for SOLDIER."

Her lips twitched. "You wanna be in SOLDIER. Gurk. Scuse me." She turned around and began laughing, the high-pitched whining kind that made him wince. When she turned back around, hand held over her mouth, she said, "Okay, okay, try this again. What do you want?"

"Oi, Trish, we are taking on recruits," shouted a voice from the back. A grizzled old head stuck through a door, and the man glared at the receptionist. "Don't send em all--" His eyes fell on Cloud, who, insulted already, was already standing as tall and as straight as he could. "Well damn."

"Sir," Cloud started, but the man came out from the door and he immediately quieted. He was built like a bear, tall and broad-shouldered. Obviously he had seen better days, as some of his girth was stomach rather than muscle, but the uniform fit him well and even if Cloud didn't understand the bars of rank on his chest, he knew there were enough of them to mean the man was more than a mere officer.

"How old did you say you were?" Trish asked, leaning against her desk, chin propped on her hand.

"Fourteen," Cloud repeated, ignoring her giggle and keeping his eyes on the officer. "Sir, please, I came from Nibelheim--"

"Nibelheim?" The officer snorted, but it seemed out of surprise. "You came all that way?"

"Yes, sir," Cloud said.

"Thought mountain folk were taller," he muttered, thumbing his nose, then shrugging. "Well, fourteen's an acceptable age. We've taken in Soldiers at that age."

Cloud hoped it wasn't too obvious that he perked up at the mention of SOLDIER. "Sir, I'd like to enlist for--"

"Son, at your size, you'll be lucky to survive basics." He glanced up at Trish. "Get out a form."

"Captain," she started, standing up straight, "he's a runt. I've seen men with d--dogs bigger than him."

"You keep your mouth shut and do as you're told, girl. You're paid to follow orders." He looked down at Cloud. "Son, I'm going to be honest. The men here are not friendly to newcomers. And you look like bait."

"Bait?"

He stared at Cloud, then shook his head. "The way it works, you enlist as a candidate for SOLDIER. They'll put you in with the troopers, and have someone keep an eye on you. You do well enough, or you catch someone's eye, they'll put you in as a candidate in a Soldier's squad. You don't do well enough, they'll punt you into the regulars and more than likely you'll get stuck there, unless you do something uncommonly good. But right now, SOLDIER's not going to have exams for another year." He grunted. "And they have a height requirement, so better grow a few inches before then."

Trish thrust a clipboard with some papers at him, along with a pen. "Better write neat, kid."

Cloud took it, then looked up at the officer. "Thank you, sir."

"Don't thank me, son," the officer muttered, starting back toward the door. "You don't watch yourself and you'll be in the infirmary in a week."

***

The papers Trish handed him first were just a few in a long line of papers. The Shinra required all kinds of forms to be filled, including things for taxes that he didn't quite understand but when he asked Trish she just muttered something about circling the first option on those pages, which Cloud did, and he was glad to see that was it. Then there came the medical information, and the information about his parents. He was fine for the first page, writing down the info about his mother, but then he flipped to see another page, one for the father. There was an option for deceased--there had been for the page for his mother--but when he asked, Trish said he had to fill out all of the information or else SOLDIER wouldn't consider him.

He stared down at the page blankly for a few moments. He didn't want to make it up. But there was nothing to say. He glanced up as a couple of older boys walked in and started chatting with Trish, and then filled in as many blanks as possible with "NA." He hoped it would work.

When he finished, he had to wait for Trish to hand the boys their papers, but then he gave her his. She looked down at it all, then told him to go back to the captain's office and tell him he was through. He had stepped into the back door to hear snickering behind him, but ignored it, looked up the hallway and into the first door to see the captain at a desk, working through a stack of papers.

He knocked on the open door.

"Come in," the captain muttered, then glanced up to see him there. "You done?"

"Yes, sir."

"Come back this time tomorrow. If your information's cleared, we'll put you through a physical, then send you on your way, wherever you've been assigned."

"Thank you, sir."

He left the office hearing Trish's high laughter, but as he stepped out onto the street someone passed him wearing a different uniform than usual, and he stopped, turned and stared as the man kept going, heading for one of the other entrances.

He was tall, and hanging from his back was a massive sword. The man wore a helmet, so Cloud couldn't have seen his face when he passed, but as the man kept walking he raised his hands, took off the helmet, shook loose long, wild black hair. Cloud stared, unable to help himself, the gait so smooth, so natural, and the uniform fit the man perfectly.

"Oi, Zack!" It was somebody else, someone behind Cloud.

The Soldier turned, grinning. Though his eyes were on his friend, Cloud froze at the sight of that face, the grin, the faint scar on the left jawline, but above all, the eyes. The eyes were like a storm, steel blue in color, but the pupils were ringed with a sliver of a green glow.

***

Even when he found a "cheap" inn room for fifty gil, he was still shaking when he went up to the room and put his bag down. His room was little more than a closet with a cot and a shelf built into the wall that might have been a desk. A screen was implanted in the wall, too, but the only channels it played were Shinra news channels. He flipped through them once or twice, just to give his hands something to do, but it was all boring.

There was a small stall built into the side of the room, a kind of bathroom with a small seat that was supposed to be a toilet, and an even smaller indentation that was meant to be a shower. The walls were fake, plastic marble, and he thought originally it was meant to be cream with chocolate swirls, like an ice cream. Instead, the shower looked dirty. He knew better than to think about the toilet, and he tried not to think about the bedsheets when he crawled beneath the covers. The room's one window was high up in the wall, a square so small that it only cast a small patch of moonlight on the floor. It moved, slowly, during the night. He tried to sleep, but the bedsheets were too rough and there were noises coming from the room over, rhythmic noises that bothered him. Voices raised at one point; something crashed and broke at another. A door slammed afterward, and he got up to doublecheck that the door was locked. He thought he saw a bug scitter across the floor as he went back to the cot, and when he got back beneath the covers he pulled them over his head.

***

It was supposed to be a routine monster extermination mission. There had been reports of a large Mako-enhanced creature running about the northern wastes, and giving some of the science teams based out of Icicle Lodge a hell of a time with their research. After some squads of troopers were sent to deal with the problem and none of them returned, the general of the Shinra forces had decided to send in some experts to make sure it was dealt with properly, and with no more waste.

The monster was a behemoth. They had killed it, of course. What happened afterward, the ambush while they were on their way back to the snowmobiles--that had been unexpected.

"The caves," Sephiroth ordered, as brisk as the wind, darting down one of the paths. He followed his commander quickly, glancing back over his shoulder. Their assailants hadn't been stupid, but they had underestimated them and their agility, even in such conditions.

Snow flew in their faces, but he was able to keep his commander's long black coat in sight easily enough. The path into the mountains twisted along and suddenly they were between two ledges; the air was free of wind, but it was still freezing.

The pain in his side came back with a vengeance, and he growled, holding a hand against the wound even as he followed Sephiroth off the path and into a cavern. His eyes adjusted quickly to the dim light, and Sephiroth ducked back outside for a moment, came back and saw him leaning against the wall. The pale green eyes looked immediately at the wound, then flew to his own gaze.

"When did that happen?" Sephiroth asked. His commander came closer, and he felt himself stiffening, pulling away from the other man's look.

"When they jumped us, one of the bastards got behind and--" He hissed in pain as Sephiroth's fingers darted forward and prodded the opening, and the older man muttered a Wutanese curse.

"Poison. You're sweating." Sephiroth glanced up at him again, still testing the injury with his fingers. "You took this one for me. I felt you stand behind me."

"Couldn't just sit by..." he grunted, clenching his teeth as Sephiroth jerked his hand back, glaring at the bullet he had caught in his fingers before tossing it aside.

"Careless of you," Sephiroth said, sheathing his long sword and pushing aside the folds of his own long coat, before untucking the thickly woven turtleneck top. He jerked back at the feel of the cold air against his skin, but Sephiroth placed his gloved hands against the wound and even through the leather gloves he could feel the other man's warmth. "You know I have higher poison resistance," Sephiroth muttered, brow knitting as he concentrated. "There." A green glow gathered around his hands, which he pressed tighter against the injury.

He shut his eyes and braced himself as the spell went to work, a curative spell layered with an esuna. The commander was the only one he knew who could manage that, to cast two similar spells simultaneously. If it didn't hurt so badly, he would have felt more impressed. Gradually, the pain faded, and he blinked his eyes open when the warmth was gone again from his skin. He felt his side gingerly, before retucking his uniform and beginning to draw his coat closed again--then stopped, when he realized that his commander had not drawn away, but still stood close. He blinked, looked up, found the older man staring at him again, the glow intense.

"Sir...?" he said, and Sephiroth's lips curled, a sinuous line. He leaned forward, for an instant.

"No heroics this time, Cloud. Let's get back at those bastards."

He grinned back, nodded, even as the taller man drew away. He followed as if drawn on by gravity, pulled on by strings, and wondered for a brief instant just why he felt so warm. "Yes, sir."

***

Cloud blinked his eyes open, panicked for a brief moment when he found himself staring at pale dirty yellow. Then he sat up, and the bedsheet fell around his shoulders, and he remembered having drawn it up over his head. Sighing, he glanced about, regained his bearings. It still felt unreal, and he wondered briefly if it was right that his dream should have felt more real than what was around him. Blinking at his own logic, he absently felt at his side, but there was no slick wetness of blood, no tightness of scarring, no warmth from glove-covered hands. He stared at his own, at the scars on his palms, and sank back onto the thin pillow.

"I'm going to be in Soldier," he whispered to the ceiling. He doubted the spider crawling into the corner listened, but he sighed and decided the sooner he was out of that room, the better.

In less than half an hour, he was out of the inn, and trudging once again to the door of the enlisting station.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

The stethoscope was chilly, and he flinched when the doctor first touched him with it, on the left side of his chest. The doctor ignored him, and gave him soft orders for a "routine" physical, whatever that meant. When the doctor noticed Cloud's bewildered look, he did stop, jotted down something or other on his notepad for Cloud's file.

"You've never had a check-up?" the doctor asked, pulling the ear pieces from his ears and letting the stethoscope settle around his neck.

Cloud shook his head. "You only called the doctor in Nibelheim if you were sick." _And sometimes not even then._ He could clearly remember such a time, but he shoved the memory back, concentrating on the doctor. He wasn't certain he trusted everything the man was doing, what all these instruments and measurements were supposed to mean.

The doctor double-checked Cloud's file. "Nibelheim... Where is that, again?"

"North of Cosmo Canyon and the desert, in the mountains."

"Ah, that's right. The range south of Rocket City?" He paused, as though there was something else he thought to say, but thought better of it. The man shrugged, and nodded. "Right. Let's keep going. Stand up on the scales, please."

The rest of it went well, or at least, well enough that the doctor wrote what he said was a note of mostly-approval.

"You're not much, but what isn't skin and bones is muscle," the doctor murmured, scribbling at another piece of paper. "If they work on that muscle, you could be military material, all right. Short, though."

Cloud ignored that, glad to have survived the physical at all, and as soon as he had the slip of approval that the doctor gave him he was sent down the hall, into another oom, where he was issued a uniform, and told to change into it. They cut his ponytail straight off. Then he was handed some dogtags, and then he was given an envelope. The entire builing loomed large and cold, except for the hallways which always felt too narrow and low, especially when entire patrols of troopers marched through. It was awkward changing out of his clothes and into the uniform the first time, in the locker room. He thought for sure he messed something up but he was glad, at least, that at the time in that particular locker room he was the only inhabitant. The space in the locker room had not only been cramped and cold, but humid, and smelled of sweat and mold. It had taken some doing not to gag, even when he left the room and was told by a trooper where to go to next.

He told the trooper his assignment for the barracks, and then followed the fellow grunt down more hallways, until he found himself in front of another door in the barracks block of the Junon base, the room he was expected to live in until he was reassigned.

 _Or not_ , he acknowledged, when finally the door was opened.

***

He was not the strongest, but he was a quick learner.

He learned, first, that his bunk was his only space of privacy and sometimes not even that. Since he was smallest, and he was new, his bunk was the last bunk, the bunk that the last trooper who "hadn't made it" had had, bunk number forty-two. There were twenty bunks per barrack room, and yet the numbers were given out oddly--all the bunks on top were even, but the top bunk before his was number eighteen, not forty.

He learned that, being on the top bunk, he had no privacy. He also learned that, being on the top bunk, that the other troopers in the room would, if they so desired, move his ladder, or slicken it up, so he could not get up to or down from his bunk. He learned that putting up fold-outs of scantily clad women, or at least well-endowed women, around his bunk was allowed, as well as pictures of home occasionally, perhaps a girlfriend or two--or, for some of the men, three or four--and definitely pages from the latest weapon and gun magazines. Most bunks had some form or another of this kind of decoration; his was the only without.

He learned that any sort of awkward sounds at night were to be ignored, so long as they did not approach his bunk, and even if they did, it just meant trouble and it was doubtful they'd let him keep his ladder, meaning he either spent the night locked in a broom closet, or he spent the night after being pelted or punched on his bunk with no way of getting down without employing proper fall-landing techniques that they had yet to learn in training. He had learned that reading ahead in some of the textbooks they threw at him was a smart thing to do.

He learned that even though he had a private locker on the other side of the barracks room, it did not guarantee that anything kept in the locker would be safe. He would have to find another place to hide things, or, as one trooper joked a few days ago, get a trained attack dog to protect it.

He learned that clothes and uniforms were to be kept in-sight as much as possible. He learned what it was like to show up to roll call in a stained or torn uniform early on. He learned how the drill sargeants enjoyed hurting others. He had learned in Nibelheim how to keep it from showing until he was alone, which was rare here, but he learned the hiding places, too. He even learned of a side road that went all the way down to the Junon beach, a stretch of land where he was more likely to run into a wayward monster than another human being.

He learned new vocabulary. He had already known damn and shit and hell, which was employed liberally by the young boys of Nibelheim, and even a few others. But he had never heard some of the new words before, and certainly he had never heard them used in such long strings. There was an odd quality about them.

He learned, quickly, what that young hitchiker had implied, about the other boys, about what they might say about him, about why he should be careful. He thought it was something like how his mother had warned him about things, but his mother did not speak like the troopers did, obviously, and she--she did not hurt him to teach him.

He learned the names of all the staff members of the infirmary within a month.

There were other things he learned, the sort of thing one expected to learn from the military. How to assemble, disassemble, clean, load, aim, shoot a gun. Different varieties of guns. They mentioned blades but that was for a more advanced course. He learned basic defensive maneuvers. He was required to learn strategic formations. He was expected to be able to enact these formations with the troopers from his barracks room on the green, which wasn't really green but just a lawn of trampled brown, ugly grass. It was the kind of grass that, although dead, still cut into his cheek when he fell against it.

***

The mess hall was the kind of place that some troopers considered their home away from their bunks. It was their gathering place, since many could not afford to go out and get wasted every day off. And it was the place for mail call, so contact from home or from loved ones. It was a place of communication, interaction.

For a young trooper like Cloud, it was the worst place.

It hadn't been long. Only two months. He had sent a short letter home to his mother--not a postcard, other people could read it--to let her know that he had arrived safely and was currently undergoing training. When he heard a voice shout his name during mail call in the mess hall, he froze first, then quickly went to retrieve the letter. He took his half-eaten plate of food and got rid of it, hurried outside where he might have more privacy to read.

He'd gotten four steps from the door when it began.

He was fine, until one of them took the letter from his mother, and laughed, and tore it.

The first punch shut up the leader, but he had had the advantage of surprise. They had all taunted him but he had only stood around and taken it, before; now he hit back. He wanted to hit again, even harder, but the others moved in. It would have gotten worse; noise started to rise in the mess hall, but he broke away from the group and ran down a side hallway. The angry troops followed him, and he had no choice but to duck into one of the locker rooms. He didn't pay attention to which one.

This locker room was larger than any other he had seen. He blinked to see that each locker was as tall as a man, instead of a half-size like the lockers in the rooms for the troopers. The benches were the only obstacles that limited space. Around the chunk of wall that separated the locker room from the showers, he could hear water going. He almost considered running into another shower stall and turning on the water, hoping maybe they wouldn't go that far. But then, he knew this type of boy, far better than he knew any other kind of person. He braced himself when he heard the door open behind him.

"Little slut likes to run, doesn't he?" muttered one of the young men, thumbing his nose. "What should we do to him?"

"Whatever it is, let's do it quick," said another. "Or at least, let's get him outta here and then beat the shit out of him."

"Isn't this the kid who wants to get into SOLDER?" said one that got around behind him. "Why don't we leave him here? Let the Soldiers see what kind of a runt he is. Then he'll never get in."

"Heh." The first one to speak grinned, then stepped over one of the benches and launched himself at Cloud.

He managed to duck the first punch but the second caught him in the side. Two others ran in and grabbed him by the arms, picked him up and slammed his back against the wall of lockers. The others took turns punching him, then, and although he tried to kick and fight back, struggled to get out of their holds, he just got hit harder. He couldn't feel his side anymore, and his face hurt like hell--one of them had been wearing a ring, he could feel the cut on his cheek, he was lucky none of them had aimed to break his nose.

"Oi, _oi_!"

The anger in the new voice caused everything to stop, and suddenly one of the troops cursed and ran. Cloud got dropped, and although he tried to lean backwards against the lockers his legs gave out on him and he slid to the floor, tipping over onto his side and covering his face with his arms, his own hands grasping his hair in frustrated tangles as he heard the troopers run off.

"Sons of bitches, what the hell did they think they were--" The voice cut off and he felt the newcomer lean down over him. Water fell in drops against his bare skin, causing him to blink, and then he realized the shower water had stopped running. He blinked open his eyes, moved his arms just enough to stare up.

It was the black-haired Soldier. His brow furrowed with concern, and he leaned down, wet dogtags flashing in the dim light of the room.

"Hey. Don't worry, they're like most dogs--they see a wolf and they run away with their tails between their legs. Sons of bitches." He shook his head, leaned down closer. "Come on. I'll take you to the infirmary."

Cloud gasped for air--his whole chest felt constricted. He shook his head. "Please, no."

"No?" The Soldier frowned. "Let me get some clothes on. Then we'll see."

***

They found the letter outside of the locker room, the two halves trampled on and covered with boot prints, but at least it had still been in the envelope. The Soldier growled, and tucked it behind his wide belt, and then looped one of Cloud's arms around his shoulders.

He asked Cloud questions, first about his injuries, and then about himself. Little things, like which room had he been assigned to, who his drill instructor was, what poison they were serving in the mess hall today. He took Cloud to another part of the barracks, apologized for the discomfort, and used a cardkey to get into a room.

It was a single, and according to the Soldier as he helped Cloud to sit on his bunk, it was temporary. He lived in Midgar; it was where he was normally stationed, but there had been a couple of things that needed seeing to in Junon and they had sent him in to do the job. Cloud just stared, drinking it all in, just like the cool water in the glass the Soldier gave him. He watched the way the man walked, the way he moved, just as he listened to the way he talked. The man was so relaxed, even as he took out a first-aid kit from beneath the bathroom sink, even as he checked out Cloud's injuries. He gave Cloud a small bottle of liquid medicine, told him to drink it, it was military standard and it was pretty good stuff, would work on small things like bruises and cuts, just helped facilitate the healing processes of the body faster.

"Tastes like shit, though," the Soldier said as he uncapped the bottle for Cloud. "You'd think they'd at least put a little sugar in. I mean, obviously you're not drinking it unless you're in pain already, right? Why make it worse? Damn sadists."

Cloud downed the bottle in one shot--there wasn't really enough in it for more than that, and he knew better than to take it in sips--the taste would be too hard to swallow more than once. He was right; he gagged, dropped the bottle, but the Soldier caught it and patted him on the back.

"It's all right, kid. Oh." He reached behind him, pulled out the two halves of the letter. Glancing down at them, he held them out to Cloud. "Here you go. Cloud?"

Cloud nodded, taking the pieces and holding them together, before opening his jacket and tucking them inside. Even moving like that hurt, and he winced.

"Sorry."

"Huh?"

"I... I didn't know that was the SOLDIER locker room," Cloud mumbled, clasping a hand around his arm, rubbing the sore muscles.

"The hazing here in Junon has always been worse than anywhere else," the Soldier said. "It's all right. Even if you had known, it probably would have been the best option. And how many of them were there? Hell, I don't blame you. And one of them looked a little roughed up, too..."

Cloud looked up at the man, from under his bangs, his shoulders still hunched. "I don't want to trouble you. Sir. I can go. Now?"

The silver eyes, which had been looking at the door, now turned to him. "Sir? Hell no. I'm off duty. We won't have any of that protocol crap. My fault for not introducing myself." He grinned, held out a hand. "The name's Zack."

"Zack?" Cloud murmured, staring blankly at the offered hand. Cautiously, he took it, amazed at the firm and warm grip of the other man as it closed about his own. He looked back up, saw Zack smiling, still. Even his smile was warm. "Um. Nice to meet. You. Sir."

"Just Zack." Another laugh, and Zack crossed his arms. "How old are you? Where are you from? Judging by your accent... well, you're not from a city."

Cloud shook his head. "I'm from Nibelheim. And, um, fourteen."

Zack whistled. "Nibelheim? That's... a long way to go, just to enlist."

Another shake of the head. "I want to join SOLDIER."

"Fourteen... Well." Zack reached behind him, grabbed a chair and dragged it out. He straddled it, resting his arms on the back and his chin on top of them. "How was the journey?"

"Hard," Cloud admitted.

"I can believe it. That's... even farther than me." Another grin, all teeth. "I'm from Gongaga."

Cloud blinked, but he could suddenly believe it, could just imagine Zack talking with a hick accent, a blade of grass clenched between his teeth. "That's a long way, too."

"Mm-hmm. Still not as far as you. That's really something, that you made it so far. We don't get many applicants from there."

"I noticed..." Cloud dropped his gaze again, looking down at the floor.

"Oi. If your hand keeps clenching your arm like that, you'll stop the circulation." He looked up again, saw Zack's smile, the warmth. He forced himself to relax, tried to unhunch his shoulders, unclench his free hand. It was harder than it should have been. Zack stood up, though, clapped Cloud on the shoulder. "Come on. Need to get you back to your room."

"I can make it okay," Cloud said, as they stepped out into the hallway. Zack nodded, then, and gestured up the hallway.

"I've gotta go, too, I guess. But you keep an eye out, all right? It won't always be this way, I promise."

Cloud bowed his head. "Thank you."

"Hey, not a problem." A pause, and as Cloud looked up, Zack said, "You want to be in SOLDIER, right? Work hard. You'll be all right." And he saw him grin again, as Zack pulled away, started up the hallway. Another man in uniform hailed Zack, and Zack called back to him. Cloud watched him, one hand rising to his uniform, clenching over the pocket that held his mother's letter.

***

Another month passed, and the troopers that had attacked him before watched him warily, making odd threats but saying nothing. He couldn't figure out just what it was that had caused them to stop. He knew that having a Soldier come down on them might have been frightening, but Zack had left, and none of the other Soldiers that he saw around the base ever acknowledged him.

However, just like in Nibelheim, if they couldn't hurt him physically, they pretended to ignore his existence altogether. He found himself without anyone to talk to, but at least he found his stuff left alone. At night, if the others were asleep and he didn't hear any of them jerking off to their magazine spreads, he'd pull out his scrapbook and a small, personal flashlight. He never dared to take it out during the day, even while he was alone.

It was about halfway through that month that he noticed the drill instructor taking more notice of him, and no longer in quite a negative way. He sometimes saw other instructors as well as the sergeant standing about, talking, and sometimes they glanced in his direction. He didn't think he could have done anything to impress them overnight, or even over a month for that matter, and only found himself growing more paranoid.

Then one day during some time off, someone answered a knock at the room's door, and his name was called. He looked up, scrambled down from his bunk, wandered over to the door, surprised to see a man in an officer's uniform.

"You're being transferred to Midgar," the officer said, holding out an envelope with the official order. "The transport leaves tonight. Be ready and be on time."

He was so shocked that he saluted and thanked the officer without even realizing he had done so, and stared at the envelope when the door closed. Some of the other, less hostile troopers came closer, curiosity written on their faces.

"Midgar?" one said. "Really? Strife, open it up!"

Cloud shook his head. "Wait." He ran to his bunk, scrambled up on top, and then opened the envelope with his thumb. The two other troopers ran to his ladder, waiting impatiently as he scanned over the enclosed papers. "It is. It's." He leaned over, reached down the ladder and handed one of the recruits the official transfer order.

"Strife, that's awesome!" one started, but the other looked up at Cloud and shook his head.

"Better get ready now, and get out until it's time to report," he said. "You know what will happen if the others find out? They'll want to give you a good-bye, Soldier friend or not."

"Soldier friend?" Cloud said, as the other handed back his papers.

They exchanged a look, and then the second one shrugged. "They thought you must have known that Soldier. Or that you knew him after he helped you out, anyway."

Cloud blinked. "Known him? I talked to him."

They exchanged a look again, and the first one shifted uncomfortably while the second one looked away. The first finally said, "Yeah, well, rumors can be ugly sometimes. Anyway, don't let em catch you. Get the hell out of here."

He stared down at them, harder than before. "No. What do you mean? What are they saying?"

The door suddenly came open. Cloud got his answer.

***

There was another officer at the transportation block waiting for him and a few others getting transferred. The officer looked at him oddly when he saw him, and Cloud did not meet the man's gaze.

"Shit. You didn't go on duty even after you got the order, did you, son?"

"No, sir," Cloud muttered.

The officer nodded. "Right. You get on that truck and forget about it."

"Yes, sir." So he got up on the truck.

He was nervous enough that he didn't get motion sick, even as the truck lurched off down the dirt road that would lead them, overnight, to the gates of Midgar, the Floating City. He lay in the bed of the truck, curled up as though he might get sick, and the other four troopers also along stayed well out of his way. He heard one of them mutter his name, and tried to shut them out.

"Yeah, man, didn't you hear? He's the one that got away. Damned lucky fucker, too, cause he'd've had it a lot worse if he stayed, the way Davis was gearing up over it."

"The rumors're true, then?"

"Hell if I know. Or care." A pause, the feel of four different pairs of eyes on his back. "Looks like he might be that kind of type, though."

"No way, man, you can never tell just by looking at them."

"Could do for a single fuck, though, if you were desperate. Damn, you've heard what they say. Go to Midgar, you leave, you get desperate for some good action again. And I mean, a Soldier. You can just bet he'd be used to getting his way. Scrawny kid like that? Wouldn't stand a chance, even if he did say no."

"Shut up." Cloud clenched his eyes shut, though he could hear the men turn around, stare at him harder, this time out of surprise. He surprised himself, as his fingers curled into a fist. "Just shut the hell up."

The back of the truck was silent again, until one of the men said, "Sorry about that, kid."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

The infirmary bed was crisp and clean, though at least the blankets the nurse had brought in were thick, heavy cloth. They made the bed comfortable, and warm enough for him to sleep, though the windows had been left with the blinds cracked open, letting in slants of sunlight. Instead of calling for the nurse, he just turned his head away from it, when he thought he heard something. The blinds turned, the light in his small room on the ward dimmed, and he turned his head, opened his eyes.

The black of the older man's leather seemed so sharp against the white of his surroundings, he stared disbelieving for a moment. Then he looked up, saw his Commander looking down at him, expression unreadable.

"I thought I told you," Sephiroth said, "no more heroics."

"I didn't get in the way of a gun aimed at you, though," he whispered, and the older man shook his head.

"You weren't supposed to go back in."

"There were still people trapped in the reactor--" But he stopped himself, when those pale eyes locked onto his own. They were intense, more so than normal, but even more strange was that he could not tell if the other man was angry, or--

"How do you feel?"

He looked down at his left arm, covered in bandages, and was a little glad that the blankets hid the rest of his left side, or his left leg, which was much worse off. "I've felt better. But the doctor said I'd be better soon. SOLDIER healing, and all that, right?"

"Mm."

He looked back up again, this time in surprise as Sephiroth leaned down over him. Heat flushed his skin when a black-gloved hand touched his cheek.

***

Cloud gasped, sat up and instantly realized there was a strain down south. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, fell back to the bunk and stared up at the ceiling.

The barracks room was dark. Beneath him, his roommate snored. The train went past outside; some of his roommate's stuff rattled on the shelves across the room, while the stationary in their desks' drawers shook. He turned his head, looked at their digital alarm clock, stared at the numbers in disbelief. It was the middle of the night--too early to get ready for his guard duty shift, too cold and too dark to reason anything other than trying to get back to sleep--and then he remembered he had something else to deal with.

"Gods, that was a good one, wasn't it," he murmured, shutting his eyes. His roommate mumbled something beneath that could have been an actual response, but Cloud doubted it was anything coherent, and really, he wouldn't have wanted any input from his roommate. Sighing, he got up, reached for one of the bunk's posts and grabbed his jacket, pulled it around him before climbing down the ladder. His feet touched the cold metal floor and he shivered, but he found his sandals and, even though they weren't much warmer, they were still better than the metal.

The hall outside of the room was dark, and he stumbled at first on his way to the hall's bathroom, pausing at the door to listen for anyone else who might be near. Hearing nothing at all, he wandered in, clumsily cursed when he employed the cold water, came out again feeling far too awake and shivery than he'd like.

He was careful, back in the room, not to make any noise climbing back up to his bunk, then having to climb back down again when he forgot to relock the door. His next time up and he shed the jacket, hung it from the bunk post, hunkered down beneath the blankets.

He had learned that "autumn" in Midgar really just meant "early winter." He couldn't remember if it was this bad in Nibelheim, this time of the year. He felt as though it should be, but his body couldn't remember.

He curled up beneath the blankets, drew them up over his head. He wished, and not for the first time, for his bed at home, and a mug of his mother's cider.

***

He decided, early on, that he hated guns. He especially hated the mass-manufactured machine guns the army handed them. He hated the loud noise, he hated the fact that, no matter how precise his aim, how wide the shots flew. He thought it was no wonder that the Wutanese managed to put up so good a fight against the Shinra. The Shinra were going for mass-killings, but the weak strength of their guns--even against Wutanese armor, the bullets wouldn't do much damage unless they hit a joint.

Their handguns were much better, and there was a surprisingly good selection of rifles and shotguns. But as those weren't standard equipment for a grunt, that might explain the higher quality.

No matter what the quality, though, he hated them.

Standing in the firing range for practice before returning to the barracks, he growled at the target across the range. Though the figures were devoid of features, save for the various target points--which didn't do much good for machine gun practice--he tried the tactic of imagining one of the more notorious bullies in its place--and his shooting still sucked.

"Dammit," he mumbled, then jumped when he heard a voice say, "Oi, be careful with that--the kickback looked like it might throw you over."

He turned and stared, eyes widening behind the goggles, surprised to see Zack there, squinting behind his own goggles at the target. Even though the Soldier's voice had been muffled by the mufflers, Cloud had been able to recognize it. Zack held a handgun in his right hand, and then joined Cloud in his booth.

"S-sir," Cloud said, "I don't think that t-that's allowed--"

"Guy on duty's a friend of mine," Zack said distractedly, then looked down and grinned at him. His hair seemed even wilder, as if in revolt against the band that held the mufflers over Zack's own ears. "How ya doin, kiddo?"

"Um." It was about all he could get out, before he flicked on the safety and set his machine gun down on the shelf.

"Duty and classes going all right?"

"They're going," he said, keeping his eyes on the machine gun. It was awkward, standing so close to Zack, and even though he didn't think the rumors from Junon had followed, he didn't like the thought of them starting up again.

"You didn't seem to be doing as well in your physical training classes as I thought you would," Zack said, his free hand on his hip. "They're not treating you well, are they."

He winced, and tried to concentrate on Zack's handgun. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to disappoint--"

"Oi, oi, that's not what I mean," Zack said quickly. "You're not disappointing me. I just know how hard it can be--and really, I should have expected as much, you being as small as you are. Of course they'd try to bowl you over and punt you back into the regulars. Have they even told you about the mentor program?"

Cloud blinked and looked up. "Mentor?"

The Soldier grinned again, but it faded. "They didn't. Those bastards. Well, hell, how long were you planning on being here?"

"Um, just a bit--you see--the machine gun--"

"Here, let me show you a little something. We'll start right now. I'll even make sure the time gets clocked on the paperwork, once we get it set up. C'mere."

Zack's left hand came down on his waist and dragged Cloud in front of him. Cloud blinked and felt the heat rise to his skin; he didn't think Zack meant anything by it. That kind of closeness made him nervous, though, and as Zack directed him to stand with his feet shoulder-width apart, clasped the handgun in his hands and raised them up to Cloud's eye-level, Zack seemed to notice.

"Hey, you okay?" he asked, quietly. "If you don't want to--I did just jump ahead, I didn't even ask you if you wanted--"

"It's all right." His voice squeaked. It was embarrassing, but he looked up at Zack and Zack patted him on the head.

"Oi, it's okay, you know. Don't hunch your shoulders, na? It'll mess up your aim."

***

After that, Zack walked Cloud to the communal showers for the training branch of the military base, explaining along the way about the mentor program. It was, simply, a way for a Soldier to help train someone that he thought had potential. An added bonus, though, was that Cloud would have an excuse to move out from his current room and move in with Zack. Zack said this while giving Cloud a knowing look, and Cloud looked down at his feet.

"Zack?" Cloud said, just as Zack was about to leave him at the door to the showers.

Zack stopped, turned around. "Yeah?"

"Thank you. I just... just have one question." Zack nodded, and Cloud averted his eyes. "Will this... if I did, I mean, we did, then would it... would it start rumors?"

The Soldier cocked his head, just slightly, brow furrowing. "Rumors--shit. What's happened?"

"N-nothing--"

"It's not nothing, especially if I had something to do with it." Zack looked up as a couple of troopers turned the corner, shook his head and looked again at Cloud. "Look... Don't worry about it tonight. Take a shower and get some sleep, okay?"

"Okay," Cloud said, and Zack was gone.

That night, Cloud lay in his bunk on his side, staring at the glow from the digital alarm clock, rather than directly at the clock itself. His roommate got in late from evening guard duty and made a racket moving things around, setting things down, trampling on something and cursing loudly. He blamed it on Cloud, as he always did even though Cloud always made sure not to leave anything on the floor, and must have thought Cloud was asleep--not surprising, the bunk was high up and Cloud liked to stay close to the wall--because he hissed out his anger loud enough for Cloud to make out enough of the words. They were the same accusations, the same words. They reminded him of blood, of laying sprawled in front of the Shinra Mansion and gasping because he couldn't breathe through his nose.

"I'm not," he muttered, and turned over to face the wall, pulling up his blankets and shuddering long after his roommate had finally gotten into the bunk. "I'm not..."

***

He wouldn't be able to move until the end of the week, according to a note he received in his small mailbox, from Zack. The request had gone through, however, without a problem, and the day after he had gotten the note from Zack, he received his copy of the official request. It took him a moment to make out the signatures included. One was read as being the signature of the member of SOLDIER making the request--signed "Zackary Donovan, First Class"--and the other signature at the bottom, marking the approval of the request...

Cloud stood in front of his mailbox, staring at the paper, blinking. He glanced up, worried someone else might see, and hastily shut the box. It would be another day before he could move out--it would be another day that he would keep the move hidden from his roommate, and any other trooper.

There was something else he had kept hidden.

He hurried back to the room in the barracks--already, it wasn't his room anymore, he thought of it as his roommate's--and he clambered up the ladder to his bed. He shifted the blankets and quilts, unburying his pillow. He reached under it, pulled out his old scrapbook, flipped quickly to the next open plastic sheath and stared again at the second signature, unable to help his smile, small but genuine. He traced the signature with a fingertip, then slid the paper into the sheath.

It was only as he buried the book again beneath his pillow, beneath the blankets, that he realized how frightening it was, that he had not even met the man but his signature had that much power over him, to make him happy.

That that man could just touch him, even in a dream, and make him feel--

Cloud stopped himself. He didn't have much time before he had to eat and then get to a survival tactics class. He told himself he'd daydream as much as he wanted later, when he was getting his things together.

***

They walked to Zack's apartment in the cold autumn air, the breeze still tinged with winter. It was the only setback Cloud could think to living with Zack, other than the potential rumors--the apartments were military housing, but they were located off the base, which would mean longer treks back and forth. But there wasn't much between the base and the apartment complex, just the typical gates and walls, a street of barber shops, twenty-four-seven grocers, and bars. There was a diner at the corner that served surprisingly good sushi, and around the corner was a coffee shop. It wasn't uncommon to see men take their dates there, or to see members of the SOLDIER candidate program there in line for a late-night caffeine shot while cramming.

The apartment was small, and Cloud winced when he saw the mess. But Zack welcomed him and showed him the small living room, the kitchen that was only separted from the living room by a very small bar, the bathroom which was cleaner than Cloud initially gave Zack credit for--considering the amount of clothes scattered about--and then the bedroom, which had two old double beds, one that looked obviously slept in, and the other which looked as though it had only recently had piles of weight removed from it.

"What was there?" Cloud asked, as Zack pulled out the drawers he had cleared out for Cloud's use. Zack looked up, blinked.

"Oh, um. Nothing. Just some books."

"Right." Cloud had to fight the urge to laugh, but allowed himself another smile as Zack winked at him. He began putting his clothes into the drawers, as Zack took it upon himself to hang up Cloud's uniforms in his side of the closet, when he noticed something on the window sill that he would not have expected to find in Zack's apartment.

"Flowers?"

There were flowers, in a small pot, on the window sill. Cloud left the drawers open, wandered to the window, and carefully touched a yellow petal.

"Those? They're a gift from someone."

"Someone?"

"Yeah."

Cloud looked up, saw a rare sight, Zack with more color to his cheeks than usual, a reddish hint. Zack rubbed the back of his head.

"They're from my girlfriend."

"Oh." He stared again at the pale yellow flowers, eyes taking in the refreshing sight of greenery while his mind took in the information. He wasn't certain how he felt, but he was surprised he felt anything at all. "Oh," he repeated, quietly.

***

It was a welcome change to bathe in a real shower, stand beneath a spray and for once not worry about a jet of cold as the other troopers came in, from training, from guard or patrol duty, from missions. It was a welcome change to wander about in his boxers and his tank top, the one he picked out because it didn't have the Shinra logo anywhere on it, except maybe the tag, and not feel as though he was being stared at. Zack was a welcome relief because he only looked up to see what Cloud was up to when he was curious, or when he wanted to talk. Which, since they hadn't had that much time to talk before, was a lot. Cloud didn't mind, though--with the request, since it was technically a "transfer", he had the following day off. So after arranging his spot on the small desk that was now his very own, he lounged on the bed beneath the covers while Zack lay back on his bed, hands clasped beneath his head.

"So, why?"

"Why?" Cloud repeated. The bedclothes and pillow smelled like cinnamon. It was warm. It was all warm.

"Why SOLDIER?" Zack turned his head to look at him, briefly, before staring back up at the ceiling. The rest of the apartment was dark, and there was only an old lamp on a nightstand beside Zack's bed to light up the room. "It must be something, to carry you so far away from home."

"I want to be stronger," Cloud said.

Zack blinked. "Stronger?"

"Yeah. It..." He closed his eyes, didn't feel like turning over, but he didn't want to look at Zack either. Not right then. "There was this girl, back home. Everyone loved her."

"Oh? So you want to get stronger to impress her?"

"N-no." He swallowed. "Something happened. She fell. She went into a coma. And I... I wasn't strong enough to help her."

There was a pause, and he could feel Zack's eyes on him again. He couldn't tell the expression, though, wasn't sure he wanted to. He trusted Zack, but he wasn't sure he trusted him that much.

"Were you in any position to help her?"

"I... I don't know. But no one else could have. It was up in the mountains, one of the paths gave way. I tried. I did. But it didn't matter." He rolled onto his back, knees still drawn up as much as he could, and he shivered despite the warmth. "That week, while she was in the coma, I saw an article in the newspaper, and saw something on the news, and... I thought, if I got into SOLDIER, I'd be strong."

"How long ago was this? SOLDIER's not been on the news for a long time."

"It was back around the end of the Wutai War," Cloud said. He opened his eyes again; it was safe, Zack had taken to staring at the ceiling again.

"Hmm... Your reasons are better than some of the men I've known. Still..." Zack shifted to get more comfortable, and looked over at him. "Is this going to be okay?"

He smiled, or tried to. "It's better than okay. I think I'll like it here."

"You had mentioned rumors, before. About me?"

"In Junon. Before I left. They said things about me."

Zack's expression darkened. "Bastards. I can just guess. Shit. I'm sorry, Cloud."

"They'd probably have said the same thing, even if you hadn't had helped me," Cloud said, shaking his head. "A lot of the troopers here say the same kinds of things. They just don't all say it to my face."

"But it doesn't change the fact that they still say them."

"I'm not deaf," he muttered. "So?"

"So you know what they mean, those things they're saying." Zack's eyes were on him, more intently than before. In the dim light, the green-tinted gleam in his eyes seemed stronger.

"It doesn't mean anything."

"It means a hell of a lot, round here."

"I know enough, don't I? I know when to run. I know when to fight. I know when I don't have a choice. Maybe I don't want to know more than that. Besides..." He did look at Zack, straight on, this time. "Doesn't it bother you? That they say that about you?"

Zack shrugged. "I'm not the one that they can gang up on. They can say whatever the hell they want about me--all the good people here already know the truth. It's what they say about you that bothers me."

"But why? Why do you care?" Cloud's left hand clenched, and his throat tightened. "What else could you get out of me?"

Zack was quiet, looked at him long and hard, before saying, "I liked you, when I met you. You look like someone who would be a good friend. And a man needs as many good friends he can get, these days. Especially here." The gaze, again, sincere. "Doesn't it hurt? Being alone so much."

He rolled over, rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes. He drew a breath and it hurt; he clamped down on the whimper before it could escape. It came out in a gasp, instead, when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey," Zack whispered, beside the bed. "It's all right. Okay? It's all right."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

Zack's duties as a Soldier kept him busy, and there were plenty of times that Cloud had no clue where Zack was or what his schedule would be, but he found out there was some rhythm to his friend's madness. Mostly, Zack said, he tried to wrangle some time off on certain days. Cloud learned swiftly what the time off on certain days--Saturday, usually--were for. It wasn't hard to guess, the way Zack hummed as he got ready to leave on those days, or how he paid particular attention to the potted flowers on those days. Sometimes Cloud would have to water them, but normally Zack took care of them all on his own. Sometimes Zack was only gone from the time he left until late evening--other times, he wouldn't come home until late the next morning. He didn't tell Cloud much about her, and Cloud only asked generic questions, about how she was, did they have fun.

It was for the best, though, he thought, that he didn't ask questions just yet, though he wanted to. And it was for the best, he thought, that Zack did have a girl, and had told him about her early on.

He already had feelings for one man beyond his reach. It was best to stamp out any feelings for a second before they grew to be as strong.

Gods, it was strong.

It hadn't been much, but one night he had stayed up later than usual, not going straight home after his late night guard duty. Instead he had hung around in one of the lounges, and then made his way to the base's transportation block, waiting in shadows, until a helicopter arrived.

When Sephiroth emerged, the wind from the helicopter blades whipped his hair about him, and his coat had flared out with every step. Cloud had only seen him from the distance, and he did have to leave only moments after seeing the Commander of SOLDIER arrive, but even though he had walked home he was breathless the entire way.

It was frustrating. He had had to stop on the way home, weakly punched the wall surrounding the base. It wasn't much, but the pain had a way of grounding him, and when Zack asked why the hell his knuckles looked torn up, Cloud said he had had a rough day at training, and though Zack had given him a look that said he didn't entirely believe him, he hadn't asked anymore questions.

Punching a wall, however, was better than the alternative. Cloud knew that much, even though he had also thought about it.

There was some relief, though. When Zack went out, and Cloud knew he wasn't coming back until the next morning. Zack had given him a hug, that time, on the way out, because he could tell that Cloud seemed to be feeling down, and it had made Cloud somewhat happier.

That night, he lay in the bed, with all the lights out in the apartment, and the blinds for the windows opened just enough to let some of Midgar's night-glow in. He wasn't like Zack, and couldn't see in the dark, and there was something oddly comforting in seeing blurred shapes rather than sharp outlines.

He could make out his own shapes, in that kind of darkness, in that kind of glow. He could see. Sometimes, he could feel...

He turned onto his side, hugging his pillow tight with one arm, burying his face in it. This wasn't something he was used to, was something he had only tried recently, but gods, it--

It wasn't like he would ever actually meet the man. At least this way, he could pretend. He could pretend he was loved, and even if it wasn't real, he could let himself believe in it. He could drown in the feelings, in the sensations, in the illusions, blur what was and what wasn't, and afterward lay in the afterglow and the warmth, ignore the fact that he'd have to wash the sheets before Zack got back, ignore the reality of the fact that his pillow was wet because he was crying, ignore everything else.

Once, he wrapped his arms around himself and curled up when it was done. He pretended that the folds of the blankets lying about his hips were really the folds of black leather, and the arms around him, the fingers splayed against his ribs, weren't his arms, his hands, his fingers.

He was scared that he felt this way.

***

Every so often, when it had been a long day, Zack would pull Cloud from his studies or the extra exercises--push-ups or whatnot--he did on the floor, and motion with a bottle or two of beer, and drag Cloud with him up to the roof of the apartment complex. Cloud thought Zack had some sort of secret radar, because he could always tell when there was no one else up on the roof, smoking, having parties, having sex--though it really was too cold for that, but Zack said some people were strange that way.

Zack went up to the roof to drink. Sorta. He said there was something about drinking out in the open air that was different than drinking inside a building, and laughed and said Wutai must have beaten it into him. When it got very cold, and he and Cloud went up wearing coats, he'd fix a special drink, some kind of combination of alcohol and coffee that Cloud thought must have tasted terrible, but Zack would make Cloud hot chocolate, or cider, and that would be all right.

The Midgar sky was an odd thing. At night it seemed its strangest.

Cloud tilted his head back. The search lights continued to rove, crossing the sides of the Shinra Building, crossing the overclouded sky. He thought it was odd, to look up at the night sky and see nothing but the rippling underbellies of the clouds. The glow Midgar cast into the sky was dirty green, and it made it look as though the city sat beneath the belly of a serpent, constantly twisting, turning. He wondered what a serpent that big must eat. They had a story in Nibelheim about a snake that big. It had eaten its tail, and formed a circle. It was so long, and so huge, it couldn't even eat itself, even if it swallowed eternity.

They had strange stories at home. He frowned as he sipped his cider, then asked, "What's she like?"

Zack, sitting directly at his side, also stared up at the sky. Cloud wondered if he saw the same thing, with those strange eyes. "A little shorter than you. Beautiful. She's not as physically strong as I used to like my girls, but she... she's got a different kind of strength to her. Kinda like the flowers in the pot? Things like that can't grow in Midgar. But she can, and she's strong enough to stay herself."

"Strong enough to stay herself...?" Cloud repeated.

"Yeah. There's something about her..." Zack smiled, wistful. "I wish you could meet her. I think you'd like her."

"Why can't I?"

"She... has some history with the Shinra. I promised her when I met her that I wouldn't bring anyone else affiliated with the Shinra close to where she lives. She worries about her mom. Her mom worries about her. But... I can't help but think, maybe one day it will be okay. Whatever's going on will blow over. The Shinra's stubborn, but I can't see why--" He stopped himself, looked at Cloud. "You do know, right? It's not all good, Shinra. There's actually a lot of it that's bad."

Cloud nodded. "Mother told me... she told me to be careful about that."

"Hmm... good. Look, if you ever have any questions about it, about something, you let me know, all right?"

Another nod, another sip at his cider. Then, "So?"

"So?"

"What's it like to kiss her?"

Zack nearly splurted his drink, looked at Cloud with some surprise. "The hell?"

Cloud had the decency to look a little embarrassed, peering down into his mug. He couldn't tell the cider's color in the green glow of the Midgar night, but he could imagine it, a kind of amber. "I can't help it. I'm curious. And I've never... I've not..."

Zack stared. "Wait, you've never--not once?"

He frowned at his older friend. "It's not like I got much of a chance, at home. And on the way here. And gods, Junon--here--"

"What about that Tifa girl?"

Cloud's face turned red. "She never--I couldn't have ever--even if I could--"

"All right, all right, sorry." Zack snickered. "All right. It's... Well. I've kissed my fair share, but she's just..." He gestured helplessly. "She's lovely. You know? Prettiest smile. I think that's the best part about kissing her... kissing her when she's smiling."

"That's disgustingly cute."

"You asked."

"Yeah..." Cloud nudged at some invisible thing with his boot. "So, have you ever... you know?"

"Getting personal there, aren't you?" Zack blinked. "Whoa. Wait a minute. I'm not gonna have to explain--"

Cloud's face turned red. "Of course not!"

Zack stared at him for a long moment, then laughed and held up his own mug. "I think I'd need a little bit more of this before I divulge any such private information."

Cloud stared at him. "You have."

"I didn't say that."

"But you have." Cloud felt something like a smirk tugging at his own lips. "You have."

"And if I did?"

Cloud leaned back again, thought about it. "Then... I'm glad?"

"You don't sound so certain, there."

"It's not that." He sighed, blew across the surface of his cider just to watch the steam rise. "It's just..."

"Who is it?"

"Who's what?"

"The one you like."

His face colored again, but Zack only grinned encouragingly. "Well. There's... There's no one, exactly--" he started, but Zack shook his head.

"Oh, no you don't. I can tell."

"Well..."

"Not Tifa. I already figured that out."

Cloud knew his face was turning a deeper shade of red, hated his fair skin more than ever, but Zack seemed earnestly intrigued. "It's not... I'm not... There's no way it could ever--"

"Aww, c'mon. There's no harm in a little bit of daydreaming, even if it is something impossible."

"Daydreaming..." Cloud cleared his throat, shifted slightly. He didn't want to think too hard about his last "daydream." "He--it's a he--does that freak you out?"

Another laugh. "Sweet Shiva, Cloud, I've kissed some damned hot men before. Do you think I'd be bothered?"

Feeling more encouraged, Cloud nodded. "All right. It's just. He's completely out of my league, Zack. I didn't even realize I--I just admired him because he was--he is--everything. That I want. To be, I mean. And more. It's just... Everything, Zack. He is."

Zack was silent, and Cloud looked up, hoping he hadn't made a complete fool of himself with his babbling, and also torn between hoping that Zack could figure it out on his own, or Zack would never be able to guess. His dark-haired friend, however, only looked at him with more comprehension, more understanding, than Cloud thought could be possible. Finally, Zack nodded, leaned back against the concrete wall of the roof again.

"He... has a lot of admirers," Zack said.

"I know," Cloud murmured. "Besides, there's no way he'd ever--even if he did--"

Zack chuckled. "Have you ever heard of the Commander being involved with a woman? I mean, if you watched him that much, you would have noticed, right?"

"But--well, wouldn't he want to keep that sort of thing private?"

"He would... but the Shinra wouldn't. And he'd have to deal with it; he doesn't have that much choice, when it comes to the propoganda machine." A pause, a sip, then Zack looked at him, his grin a little lop-sided. "So. You tell me. The man's older than the two of us, so he's had his chances, and he's--definitely attractive. So, unless he's unlike any other man I know of and completely uninterested in sex... why do you think there's been no mention of any relationships on the news?"

Cloud blinked. Zack waited, watching him as the realization settled in.

"Wait. You mean. He." Cloud struggled, but just couldn't say the words. Then another thought occurred to him. "But he still wouldn't..."

"Wouldn't what?" Zack asked.

"Zack, look at me. Me. Do I look at all like I could ever--I'm just--" He motioned at his own body, helpless. "I'm not--" But he was stopped when Zack leaned over and kissed him, simply, over the mouth. Cloud stared at his friend in a moment of shock, before he held a hand over his lips, amazed. "You. You just."

"Kissed you? Hell yes." Zack smirked, leaned back, took another sip of his drink. "Wanted to do that at least once."

"But I--"

Zack shrugged. "You can believe what you want, but you're a rare sight, here... Remember what I said about my girl? Well, there's something of that same kind of strength, in you. Makes you something of a target, because you stand out so much. People try to pull that kind of thing down... They can't understand it. It makes them jealous." He smiled, raised a hand and ruffled Cloud's hair. "You've done wonders for my self-control, kid." He started to stand up, and held out a hand to help Cloud up. "Stop being so tempting, okay? I'm going to have to start limiting how strong I make my drinks..."

Cloud smiled, took Zack's hand. There was an odd kind of warmth in just being helped up to his feet, a kind of weightlessness. He wondered if it was just Zack's strength. "It's all right. I'm not going to try to get you to kiss me. Sides, your girl would hate me for that."

"Heh, not hate. She wouldn't hate you. I can tell. Still, stop doubting yourself, okay? Can't make a point by locking lips every single time."

Cloud set his mug aside, hesitating. "I won't. I just." He hugged his friend, suddenly, shutting his eyes, could feel Zack's surprise at the sudden gesture. "Thank you..."

"Oi, kiddo..." Zack's arms embraced him back, strong, supportive. "I told you before, remember? It's all right. Let's go in, where it's warmer."

Cloud nodded, pulled back, looked up at his friend again. "Could you tell her something for me?"

"Sure. What?"

"Could you tell her I said thank you?"

"Thank you?"

Another nod, as he collected the mug from where he had set it down, and headed for the roof access door. "Yeah. And no, I won't tell you why." Cloud grinned, opened the door. "I think she'll know."

"Heh. All right. I'll let you know what she says."

***

"Hey, Cloud? You have tomorrow off, right?" Zack leaned around the door, looking at the desk where Cloud sat, attempting to take notes.

"Yeah, but I was gonna study," Cloud mumbled. "Why?"

"I need to drop off this report at a friend's place. He said he wanted it before midnight, and I've got thirty minutes, so let's go."

Cloud blinked, looked up to see Zack holding out his coat. "Um?" Cloud said, and Zack cracked a grin at him.

"Yeah. Come on, I'm not expecting us to be all night, but we'll probably still be up late."

"But why? If you're just dropping off a report?" Cloud stood up, began gathering some of his stuff together. "And where are we going?"

"Well, normally he'd still be at his office, but it's a Thursday night so he won't be there. See, the man operates like clockwork, and even if you don't understand all his quirks or his methods, once you figure out the timing, it's pretty easy to know what's going on. Unless he's out on a mission, and then, you know. But he'll be at his suite by now. And if we go now, we'll make it in time."

"So he's a superior?" Cloud asked, pulling on his boots, and then his coat.

Zack laughed. "A friend, too. A friend. Come on. I want you to meet him."

It had been a few weeks since their conversation up on the roof, and the holiday season was approaching. The apartment had lousy heating, for which Zack apologized, but Midgar itself seemed to have its own kind of bizarre heat--where it was hot, it was suffocating, and where it wasn't, it was freezing. There didn't seem to be any kind of medium for it, and the places where snow would stick and snow would melt was as confusing as figuring out why Zack seemed to be in even better moods than usual, lately.

But Cloud didn't question why his friend was dragging him out into the cold thirty minutes until midnight, to walk around one of the other sides of the base, towards more military housing. Cloud started to become concerned when he noticed the gated communities, the large houses.

"Zack, who is this friend of yours?" Cloud mumbled, and Zack just smiled, took him to a gated apartment complex. He swiped a keycard through a reader at the pedestrian gate, which opened without a sound. They stopped for a minute for Zack to welcome the watchdogs, some larger Shinra-manipulated breeds who were gigantic but friendly enough--they seemed familiar with Zack, anyway, and Zack introduced them to Cloud carefully. Cloud stared at them in disbelief--they were like wolves, only huge, and walked with a gait that seemed unnaturally boneless at times.

Then they were away, and trudging up some stairs until they reached the top floor of the complex. Down a walkway, past a wall with a curious lack of doors, until they reached the end of the walkway, and the last door.

"Man has to have his privacy," Zack said, and knocked on the door before swiping the keycard.

"But shouldn't you wait for him to open it?" Cloud muttered, feeling distinctly nervous.

"Nah. I knocked, I opened the door--he knows who it is. He would have heard." Zack walked in, and had to reach out and grab Cloud by the sleeve to pull him in. Cloud didn't resist, only stared about in wonder.

It wasn't just an apartment, but a suite. The decor was sparse, but it was sleek, functional. Cloud stared at the number of Wutanese-styled pieces of furniture, a wooden sword stand displayed in a center niche of a large bookcase--all the other shelves were filled with books. There was a couch, in front of a television, but it was out of the way and he had the feeling it wasn't used often. There were windows all along one of the walls, but the blinds and curtains were drawn so a minimal amount of the Midgar night glow wound its way in; a lamp had come on automatically when they entered, lighting the room dimly.

"Come on," Zack said softly, pulling off his gloves. He tucked them into one of his coat pockets, and shrugged out of his coat, but Cloud noticed it seemed oddly cold in the suite. Still, he followed Zack's example and shed his gloves and coat, wandering after Zack as his older friend stepped through a doorway, into a short hall, and stopped in front of a door. He grinned, held up the folder with the report. "Oi. How much longer do I have?"

The smooth baritone that responded from the other room was not quite the same voice that Cloud had always imagined, but a shiver worked down his spine and it was not just from the cold. "Two more minutes." There was a soft hint of amusement. "Are you actually going to give it to me, or stand there grinning like an idiot?"

"You could get up and come get it yourself," Zack said, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorway. Cloud stared at Zack in amazement, and took a step back.

"It's not nice to tease me in front of guests." The voice drew closer to the doorway, and Cloud felt his breath hitch, frozen in place, no longer even capable of contemplating running and hiding. "Who did you bring with you?"

Zack tipped the folder forward; a black-gloved hand took it from him. "See for yourself." He turned his head, smiled warmly at Cloud. "Seph, this is my roommate, Cloud Strife."

The Commander of SOLDIER stepped out from the room, followed Zack's gaze until his eyes alighted on the trooper in the hall. Cloud couldn't move, not from the moment those eyes met his, not even as they glanced at him, taking him in, before returning to his face, his eyes. He nodded his head, and Cloud immediately bowed his own, shutting his own eyes.

"Pleasure meeting you, sir." He hardly recognized his own voice, could hardly believe that he had spoken at all.

"The pleasure is mine." Cloud looked up at those words, and though there was little emotion on the man's face, he was fixated on those lips, the way they turned up into the smallest of smiles. "Zackary has spoken well of you."

"Gods," Cloud breathed, and Zack laughed.

"Oi, let's stop standing around in the hallway and siddown. Shit, Seph, do you have to keep it freezing in here?"

The Commander turned, his smile changing as he looked at Zack. "I thought you enjoyed any excuse to employ shared body heat for warmth."

"Only under certain circumstances, Seph." Zack came around his friend, patted Cloud on the shoulder. "Don't forget to breathe."

Cloud nodded, looking up at Zack with wide eyes. "I think I want to kill you," he breathed, and then heard the strangest, most exhilarating sound--a short laugh from Sephiroth.

"You wouldn't be the first," Sephiroth said, stepping past them both and toward the living room. "Zack, you have beverage duty. You know where it all is."

"Sir!" Zack looked down at Cloud, nudged him. "Go on," he whispered. "Just friends, first."

Cloud swallowed, followed his friend back toward the living room. He was glad he had his gloves to hold onto; otherwise he wasn't certain he would be able to stop his hands from shaking.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

"Just friends, first," Zack had said.

Three months ago, Cloud had left the suite, Zack's hands on his shoulders to direct him, because he was completely incapable of figuring out where to go on his own. He couldn't remember the way back to the gates, nearly stepped on one of the watchdogs' tails, and as soon as they were out of the complex he had to lean against the stone wall for a moment, before he turned to Zack and squeaked out, "I didn't do anything embrassing, did I?"

Zack assured him he didn't, and he did just fine until it was time to go, though it was kinda amusing driving him about.

Cloud didn't quite believe him, but when they went to sleep, Cloud found he had never slept so well. He thought it had more to do with the fact that his brain still couldn't believe what had happened than his own tiredness.

From that day on, every Thursday except when there were missions that took Zack out of Midgar, Zack would take Cloud with him to Sephiroth's suite, intentionally holding out on turning in his reports so he'd always have an excuse. The watchdogs outside became familiar with Cloud, and Cloud realized he remembered his way to and from and the suite much more easily. What amazed Cloud the most, however, was always Sephiroth.

The first time it happened was during the third visit. Zack actually had some other paperwork that Sephiroth wanted him to work on, and Cloud had been given permission to roam the rest of the suite while the older men spoke. To give himself some breathing room, Cloud had wandered back toward the office. He had looked in, found a display case for swords, but couldn't see the one that Sephiroth was said to use. Still, he saw one that looked as though it had familiar runes on it, and had carefully peered through the glass at it--not noticing another presence until he had felt the black glove on his shoulder, and he would have thought it was Zack except he had glanced up and seen the reflection of pale green eyes looking down at him.

"That one is from Nibelheim."

Cloud dropped his eyes to the sword, trying hard to concentrate on it so he didn't look stupidly at the other man. "I... I recognized the runes. They're--the same. From home, I mean."

"You're from Nibelheim?"

He nodded. "Yes, sir."

"That does explain your accent, though Zack said it's not as strong as it once was." It wasn't said in any kind of judgemental way, rather a considering tone of voice, soft. "You may call me by my name, you realize. We're not on duty."

"Yes, sir--Sephiroth--sir."

"Hm." Cloud risked glancing up at Sephiroth's reflection in the glass, and bit his own lower lip to stop himself from gasping when he saw the small smile. "Just as Zack said." Sephiroth glanced toward the hall, then returned his gaze to Cloud. "I have one more, if you would like to see it."

"Yes, please, thank you, s--Sephiroth."

Sephiroth turned and walked away, his hand leaving Cloud's shoulder. Cloud swallowed but followed obediently, back out to the hallway, to another door, one that was closed. Sephiroth opened it and walked inside, and Cloud took a few steps in before he could see--before he realized--that he was standing in the Commander's bedroom. He nearly backed out again, but was distracted when he heard a blade sliding from its sheath; beside his bed, Sephiroth lay the empty sheath on his black covers before turning, sword held in only one hand.

It was longer than Cloud was tall. Cloud blinked, stepped forward when Sephiroth beckoned him, stood and stared in disbelief when he realized that it was easily as long as Sephiroth was tall, and Sephiroth was taller than Zack, and it--the sword--was gorgeous. There was no decoration, no gilt, only the blade, simple, perfect.

"It's called Masamune, after the man who forged it," Sephiroth said. "The Shinra brought it with them when they left Wutai, many years ago... It's the only one of its kind."

Cloud nodded, and Sephiroth let him hold it for a few minutes, when Cloud became worried he would drop it. It was so long he couldn't hold it straight for even a second, and the balance was hard to maintain at all. When Sephiroth took it from him, he resheathed it effortlessly, even though the blade's length would have made it impossible for anyone else to sheathe. It rang, too, a soft chime as it slid home.

The second time it happened was the fifth visit. Zack was busy in the kitchen fixing the latest late-night spaghetti Cloud had ever heard of, and Cloud had retreated to the office to attempt to get some reading done. He fell asleep at Sephiroth's desk, and remained completely oblivious until he stirred at a light touch, this time brushing his bangs away from his face, before lingering at his cheek. The moment he opened his eyes, however, the touch was gone, and Sephiroth informed him that the spaghetti was finished. The smell did come into the office, and Cloud's stomach had grumbled, but as Sephiroth walked out, Cloud touched a hand to his cheek and wondered if he had imagined it.

The third time it happened, Zack was away on a mission. Cloud received a message during his late-night guard duty that he was to report immediately to the Commander's personal quarters, and as soon as the man had left the other troopers on duty at the time jeered and started asking him which Soldier he had pissed off enough to draw the Commander's attention to him--worst of all on a Thursday night, as he hated to be disturbed while he was at home. Cloud hadn't needed to pretend embarrassment, or at least the red tinge that the troopers took to be embarrassment, but had hurried to the Commander's quarters, let in at the gate as he arrived, and worried that something had happened to Zack and that was the Commander's real reason for summoning him.

He arrived at the suite's door, knocked. He was still in full military mode, ready to stand at attention at the sound of another step, and couldn't think about what would happen when the door opened. His mind hit a blank wall; he wasn't certain if it was just that he was afraid that something had happened to Zack, or that he was going to be alone with the Commander, this time. When the door did open, he saluted, though he glanced up through his visor and noticed a small grin.

"You're no longer on duty, trooper."

He slowly dropped the salute, tried to smile. "Sephiroth." It was odd, how being able to address the man as he had only managed to do in his dreams still held the same effect over him, even though he felt more relaxed in his presence.

Sephiroth stepped aside, let Cloud in. Cloud had taken to investigating the Commander's library, and so he looked to the older man for permission before heading to the small study. It was always quiet in Sephiroth's suite, and the study reminded him oddly of home, so it was always a good place to catch his bearings, steel himself, usually while Zack spoke to Sephiroth about one thing or another. It gave him time to remember, it was all right, he was a guest, Zack had even told him that Sephiroth liked him.

He took a deep breath, smelled old pages but no dust or must, and drifted by the shelves that lined the study's walls, save for the one window over which the curtains were drawn shut. The lamp in the room let out a soft white light, a kind of moonlight in itself. He let his own fingers hover over the spines as he read them, trying to find another one to borrow, at least for the night, since that was something he was used to doing in Sephiroth's presence and the other man seemed to enjoy his quiet company, reading or doing paperwork himself. But as he started to pull one out, he felt as though he was being watched and stopped. Sephiroth walked to his side, reached up over his head, and picked a book out, offering it to him.

"You would like it," Sephiroth said.

"Ah, thank you..." It was stupid, to blush over something as simple as a book, even as his fingers curled about it, but the blush was there and all he could hope for was that the shadows hid it. He stared hard at the book, ran a finger over the indented space where the gilted title would be. It was old, but he couldn't think to wonder where it was from.

"Hmm." Sephiroth raised a hand, touched his cheek, but said nothing. Cloud's breath caught, he couldn't breathe, as a slender finger brushed over his lips.

The kiss, when it came, was later that night, in the bedroom, after he had showered and Sephiroth himself had emerged from his. The first one was a light touch, little more than a soft pressure to his lips, like the way Sephiroth's finger had touched them before. The second one was longer, more forceful, and he closed his eyes, concentrating entirely on the feeling. He could feel Sephiroth's eyes on him; it was impossible not to feel a gaze that strong, passing over his features, and when they separated and he did have the courage to look again, Sephiroth watched him beneath heavy lids, the green gleam in the dim light of the room one of satisfaction.

They didn't speak much. Cloud was so nervous, he thought he might shake so hard he would break, just crack all over and crumble, but Sephiroth did nothing more than hold him, that first night.

He had never dreamed so far. He had always stopped before something like this happened. But as he lay awake, with one of the other man's arms draped over his waist, the hand occasionally stroking his skin, he couldn't help but think that the reality was always so much more. The pain from his memories stronger, the remembered comforts of his mother warmer, Zack's friendship something so genuine he had never had anything like it, and the things he felt now...

He wondered if it was wrong. He wasn't fifteen yet. He wondered if Sephiroth thought it was wrong, but then thought that if Sephiroth thought it was wrong, then he wouldn't be in the other man's bed. Sephiroth had not pushed him for anything more than he had already given, and even still... Cloud knew he would give it up anyway.

Some part of him realized that that should scare him, and a part of him was scared. When he shuddered, Sephiroth drew up the heavier blankets around his shoulders, murmured something under his breath, kissed him on the cheek this time before they settled down again.

***

They did not tell Zack. Cloud honestly had no idea if Zack knew anything, if perhaps Sephiroth had told him, but even if the two had spoken about it, Zack went on as if he knew nothing. Perhaps it was part of his own way to keep it secret, keep it underwraps. If the rumors that had surrounded Cloud in regards to Zack were bad, any chances of discovery of his relationship with Sephiroth would be catastrophic, and they all knew that.

Sometimes, in their apartment, Cloud looked up from his studies and watched as Zack got ready to meet his girlfriend, during the weekend. It was after Zack reassured Cloud that they'd go visit their "friend" tomorrow evening, and patted Cloud on the shoulder, that Cloud realized that Zack really didn't know.

He wondered if it was right to feel so guilty about being happy, to feel so guilty about being happy and being unable to tell his one friend--and that gave him pause, too, because Sephiroth--well, he wasn't just a friend, not anymore, Cloud wondered if he ever was. So what did that mean? What did that make him?

It bothered him, and when he arrived at Sephiroth's doorstep, he knew immediately that the Commander could tell. Sephiroth said nothing beyond his usual spare words of greeting, but his brow knit when he saw Cloud's face, heard Cloud's usual quiet response--and Cloud realized he must not have managed to sound as happy as he usually did, and maybe that's what gave it away. Maybe not. Sephiroth seemed to have this way of looking at him, of seeing past everything, analyzing him and always being right.

Sephiroth stepped back, letting Cloud inside before closing the door. Cloud only felt more miserable knowing that he had let so much expression slip, but when the Commander stepped before him, a gloved hand touched his chin, lifted it. The long fingers stroked his cheek, and though Cloud couldn't bring himself to look up at the other man's face, he heard the man's suggestion that they sit down clearly enough, and nodded.

At first Cloud thought they would sit on the couch, but Sephiroth moved instead to his study, opening the window rather than turning on the lamp. Leaving the room otherwise unlit, he gently drew Cloud by the shoulder with him to the armchair, where he sat. Cloud shifted awkwardly, at first, before Sephiroth's hands pulled Cloud right onto his lap. Cloud sat for a moment in surprise, then looked at Sephiroth and saw the man looking at him with quiet amusement.

"You're not comfortable?" he asked.

Cloud shook his head quickly. "N-no, it's not that, it's, umm--" He felt one hand resting on his shoulder, and it drew him closer, so his head rested on Sephiroth's shoulder. That was a different feeling, one less of awkwardness but one of more intimacy and comfort, and he sat like that for several moments, feeling himself only move as Sephiroth's chest rose and fell. He closed his eyes.

"Better?"

"Yes..."

"Mm." The other hand, now, touching his face again, no longer with the glove over his hand but just the bare skin, with callouses like Zack's, from using a sword. "What's wrong?"

"I was thinking, earlier," Cloud admitted, "about Zack."

"He's all right?"

"Yeah. Just... he and his girlfriend. We're not like them, are we?" Realizing that he might not be clear enough, he turned his face to the other man's black sweater, taking a deep breath. Sephiroth smelled much differently than Zack, but not in a bad way. He was sharper, certainly, but also had a scent of something like metal to him. "We're not... dating."

The fingers that had been touching his face moved to stroke his hair. "No, we're not."

"Then... what am I doing here?"

"You were alone, weren't you? Zack said so." Sephiroth's voice had come closer to his ear, his voice low, and certain even when he sounded as if he were asking a question. "He said he could be as close to you as he could, but you would still be alone. You needed something." Cloud didn't know how to respond to that, though the words Sephiroth spoke were so true they hurt. Finally, he lifted his head, saw Sephiroth watching him, jade green eyes not far from his own blue eyes.

***

Cloud went home late that night, and on his way stopped at the cafe to pick up a hot drink--coffee, as sweet as he could make it. With the cup in one hand and a few of his books, and one of Sephiroth's, cradled in his other arm, he made it back to the apartment all right. He unlocked the door, and started to open it when it swung open on its own, and there was Zack, looking steamy and damp, with a towel about his shoulders and wearing nothing else but a tank top and a pair of boxers. Cloud stood still for a moment in complete surprise, and Zack, for a few moments, had an unreadable expression before his face split with his usual wide grin.

"Hiya, kiddo!" He stepped aside. "I was wondering what had happened to you! You went out studying?"

"Y-yes," Cloud stammered, coming inside and stamping the sludge off his boots on the mat while Zack closed the door. "S-sorry it's so late, but--surprised you're back, too."

"Oh? Yeah, well..." Cloud looked up, blinking back more surprise as Zack ran a hand through his hair, gaze distant. "Things come up. Plans change. It happens, you know?" He waved his hand dismissively, and took Cloud's books from his arm. "I'll help. Sweet Shiva, you must be freezing. There oughta be hot water, still, you should take a shower." He kept rambling as he carried Cloud's books into the bedroom, and Cloud followed after yanking off his boots and taking off his coat, hanging it beside Zack's. Cradling his coffee in his hands, he just listened, shifting from foot to foot as Zack placed the books down on his desk, went into a ramble about how much colder they said it would be soon. He had a hard time feeling relieved that Zack hadn't realized where he had been when Zack rambled like this, and finally set his coffee down to hug Zack instead.

Zack fell silent, surprised by the sudden gesture, and Cloud wondered when he felt the older man shiver before returning the embrace.

"Oi, kiddo. Frozen like a block of ice. Why'd you let me ramble? Shoulda went ahead into the shower."

"Dunno," Cloud said, voice muffled by Zack's tank top. "You're warm."

"Heh."

He pulled back just enough to lean his head back, look up at his friend's face. "Okay?" he asked, and Zack's nod was just as sincere.

"Yeah. I'm all right." A pause, and then, "That obvious, huh?"

"Just a little."

"Probably wouldn't be if you weren't so quiet and observant. James and Tom would just ramble along with me." Zack grinned. "You're so different from everyone else around here. You're like a breath of fresh air."

Cloud slowly smiled back. "Don't you mean I'm weird?"

"Nah." Zack snickered. "Have you met anyone here that could really count as normal?"

"You and James and Tom and the rest of the squad are normal." When Zack raised both eyebrows, Cloud couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed. "Well, I mean--you are. I mean, you're so great and good at everything, but--"

"Still a happy farmboy at heart, is that what you mean?" Zack asked with a laugh, then nodded. "Well, it's true. Not all of us military men, even the good ones, can be just as special as Seph." He thought about it, mouth tightening for a moment before he said, "Then again, not sure anyone could be like Seph. Not entirely. Or that anyone would really want to, you know? However glamorous they must think it is."

Cloud cocked his head. "What do you mean?"

"Well, he's never really talked about much of it while you've been around, probably because you two don't know each other that well yet," Zack said, his warmth returning in full as he pulled the towel from around his neck. "I mean, think of the kind of road his life had taken to get him where he is now."

Cloud did think of it, and yet all he could envision as Sephiroth's road was one of the dark paths in the Nibelheim mountains--which made no sense, but the strength of the image frightened him, and he turned away to pull some of his own clothes from out of his closet before getting into the shower. When he got out, Zack was snoring and kicking at his bedsheets, but he had left one of the lamps on for Cloud. Cloud wandered over to the bed, got in and shivered at the cold, turned off the lamp on the nightstand, and listened as Zack rolled over and grew quiet. When he fell asleep, he dreamed. When he woke up sweating despite the cold, a strangled sound in his throat, he couldn't remember anything about it.

***

They did see Sephiroth the next night, as Zack had promised, and came bearing a gift of Wutanese take-out. Zack told Sephiroth that the sushi chef chastised him for not dragging the Commander down to the little restaurant to enjoy his sushi more properly, but Sephiroth only looked amused and bit the fried head of one of the shrimp sushi with a satisfying crunch. Cloud stared at the raw fish and rice and seaweed with some surprise, even more surprised that Zack seemed to have no qualms with eating it either, but then his dark-haired friend explained that, by the time the Wutai War was over, there was quite a lot his stomach could handle that he never imagined it could beforehand.

Then he grinned and popped open the styrofoam container holding Cloud's fried rice dinner and handed him a set of chopsticks, and Cloud set about awkwardly getting his fingers twisted about the slim sticks while Sephiroth set in on his portion of the sushi with a surprising amount of enthusiasm.

Zack had ordered a mishmash of sushi and ramen, but he slurped with enough noise and chatted to make up for Cloud's concentrated silence and Sephiroth's more amused silence. It was one of the more relaxed meals any of them had had in some time, it felt like; even breakfast back at the apartment seemed to be a slab of toast snatched straight out of the toaster while on the way to guard duty, drills, classes, inspections. Cloud wasn't entirely certain just what Sephiroth ate other than what Zack put in front of him, but as Zack certainly didn't fix all of his meals, Cloud doubted it consisted entirely of Zack's recipes and take-out. He had a hard time imagining Sephiroth grocery shopping, too, and cast a dubious look in the direction of the man's kitchen. There was, he noticed, a coffee pot at least.

Zack noticed his look and stopped in his retelling of one of James Clemson and Tom Ruggard's pranks. "Need a fork, Cloud?"

Cloud looked down at his rice, watching as a sizeable clump fell from his chopsticks. "Maybe," he conceded. To his chagrin, Zack handed him a plastic fork from one of the take-out bags, but he struggled on with the chopsticks until the clumps of rice were too small for him to pick out with anything other than the fork.

He did get his chance to inspect the kitchen later, while Zack and Sephiroth discussed something in the Commander's small office. He told himself he was only looking around because he wanted something to drink, and he would get back to studying as soon as he had found something.

The cabinets were sparse with glasses, plates, mugs. It was all good quality but very plain. Then there were the other cabinets, where he finally found evidence of food. Everything seemed to be instant and came in little packets, cans. Wondering, he worked up the courage to open the refrigerator, only to find it barely stocked at all, save for a six pack of beers that he imagined were there for Zack's convenience more than Sephiroth's. There was another bottle of something in there, as well, but curiosity drove him to check the freezer box, where he was heartened to see a pint of vanilla ice cream.

"Someone looks lost," came a teasing voice from behind, and Cloud jerked around to see Zack leaning against the entrance to the kitchen, grinning. Sephiroth was nowhere to be seen, at least. "Or maybe found?"

"Just wondering," Cloud said, "what he ate when you're not, you know, around."

Zack laughed at that, and Cloud closed the freezer door as his friend joined him at the counter. "Well, you can imagine he doesn't actually spend that much time here. He drinks some coffee in the morning, but he likes tea. It's one of the things he fixes that he likes to invest time in, if he can." He pointed across the kitchen, to the cupboards over the bar. "Keeps that up there, if you're ever wondering." Then Zack grinned, put a hand in Cloud's hair. "Doesn't stock up on milk much, though. Sorry."

Cloud felt the heat rise to his skin. "I don't drink it that much, Zack--"

"Which is why we always have a gallon at hand at home, just in case, right?" Zack asked with a short laugh. "He doesn't fix much when he's not eating something from a mess hall or restaurant. Usually just sandwiches. The man puts the strangest things into sandwiches than anyone I've ever seen, and you remember some of the monsters that Clemson's put together."

"Criticising my culinary tastes?" They both looked up, saw Sephiroth standing with a folder in hand. The Commander smirked, then held out a folder. "Here it is."

"Oooh." Zack nudged Cloud forward. "That one's for you, kiddo."

"Me?" Cloud took the folder, blinked when he saw it was marked just like the pre-briefing files Zack sometimes brought home. He opened it, saw that it was a pre-briefing file, with scant information on the itinerary, the location, the mission goals... and, at the top, a short listing of those to go on the mission. There were only two names.

After a few more seconds of silence, Zack grinned. "I think he's surprised. Surprise, Cloud!"

"A mission?" He stared up at Sephiroth, the small smirk still in place. "With you? Us? Alone?"

"There will be chocobo. They'll be your responsibility."

A strangled sound worked out of his throat. "I'm going to die."

Zack laughed. "No, no, Cloud, you won't die. That's what Seph's there for. You see, you're going as back-up? You handle everything but the actual combat. See? It's a monster extermination mission, of a monster that Seph just happens to be an expert at killing." Zack paused. "Not that he's not an expert at that anyway. But, well, I figured it would do you some good to see what this sort of thing is like, without you getting involved in the combat. You handle the supplies, take care of the chocobo and that. Seph handles the rest, and you can observe. You'll be totally safe."

"Handling monsters, even a class meta monster like this dragon, is safer than dealing with human adversaries," Sephiroth said softly.

Cloud blinked. "Safer? Even a dragon?"

Zack shrugged. "Even monsters that ambush you, spit poison at your eyes, or are ten times your size... They don't think like humans do. That's what makes humans so dangerous."

"And this is something that not even some of the terrorist groups could be blamed for," Sephiroth said, "so the likelihood of any entanglements with them is low. Also, it's out in the middle of nowhere, so we won't have to worry about drawing any attention to ourselves at any settlements."

Zack clapped Cloud on the back. "That also means you'll be so far out of anyone's way that if anything happens to you, there's no way anybody can come help."

He could feel what was left of the blood in his face draining, but Sephiroth laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Remember? That's why I'll be there. You won't have to worry about anything." A short pause, and then Sephiroth said, "Also, your position will be one of high responsibility. Going on this type of sortie, especially as your first mission, and doing well... will make your superiors look favorably on your records."

Cloud nodded with understanding. It was to help him get into SOLDIER. For some reason, that made more sense than anything else, even if it still made him wonder... He shook his head, looked up at the other two men in turn. "So, why me? Why not Ruggard, or Matreyas, or somebody else?"

Zack shrugged. "I did discuss it with Sephiroth. This is a low budget operation, so he was told he could only bring one low-ranking trooper with him to accompany him. And like he said, even if it is a low-budget operation, your support position is still pretty important... whether we liked it or not, we had to consider experience."

"So you did look at the others." Cloud looked down again at the file. "That doesn't answer why."

Zack just grinned. "Can't get experience unless you go out there and try it, right?" He walked out of the kitchen whistling, obviously pleased with himself, and looking on the whole the best he had since the other night. Cloud still wasn't certain how he felt about their decision, other than dazed, but as he started out to follow Zack to gather their things, the Commander spoke, quietly enough that Zack wouldn't be able to hear.

"Perhaps," Sephiroth suggested, "I want you."


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

The mission was set to happen in a few days. Zack would be gone during some of that time, thanks to a mission he and a few other Soldiers were to carry out somewhere on the western continent. Zack said that this meant that he'd still be gone by the time Cloud and Sephiroth returned home, since not only did they have to kill the dragon, but find it as well.

"You'd think hunting down an oversized lizard with bad breath would be an easy thing," he had said during one of their training sessions, "but they can be damned tricky bastards, those dragons."

To make things worse, Cloud had no way of seeing Sephiroth before then, as he left the morning after handing Cloud the file. Zack said even he had no idea where Sephiroth could be, and he said it with enough concern in his voice that it made Cloud worry. Zack only shook his head when he saw Cloud's expression, and told him not to worry, that Sephiroth could take care of himself--mostly--and that he had a mission scheduled and there was no way in hell he'd ever break an appointment.

"He hates tardiness," Zack said, "with a passion. We got in a fight over it once. He punched me. Had to reset my own goddamn nose, too."

Cloud stared.

***

He came home the night before Zack left for the mission to find Zack's duffel all packed and ready to go, but Zack nowhere to be found. Eventually, it had occurred to him to try the roof, and so up he went. He did find Zack there, leaning against the railing, but leaning against the railing beside him was someone Cloud had never seen before, wearing something of a trenchcoat, with red hair, spiked at the top and pulled into a long tail at the back. The man had a cigarette, which he passed over to Zack, and Cloud found himself staring, something in the back of his head telling him he should just head downstairs and leave the two alone. He had been around enough to pick up the signals; this was some sort of friendship ritual that he wasn't a part of.

He started to turn to go when a voice called his name; he turned, saw Zack wave at him.

"Oi, kiddo, come here. Someone you oughta meet."

The other man turned, revealing the fact that his trenchcoat hung open despite the cold, revealing a black business suit get-up that seemed oddly threatening in its informalities; the blazer hung open, revealing an untucked, partly unbuttoned shirt, and a strange metal stick that hung from the man's side. Stranger still were the scars, one beneath each eye, slanting upward. They drew attention to the eyes, pale blue unlike his own, and the smirk that suddenly appeared on those lips. It made Cloud hesitate, but Zack put an arm around Cloud's shoulder and drew him closer.

"Cloud, this is Reno. Don't be scared. He can't touch you, or he knows I'll kill him."

"You wish, Zack," Reno retorted, snatching his cigarette back. "Who'd kill who?" His eyes, however, were watching Cloud, and gave him a quick once-over. "So, this's the elusive roommate? Huh. Aren't you a little short to be a trooper?"

"That's SOLDIER candidate to you, Reno," Zack corrected him. "And a damned good one. He's going out on his first mission soon, you know."

"I know," Reno drawled, taking a drag. Cloud blinked, and he felt Zack tense up even under his friend's leather jacket.

"How?" Zack asked.

Reno blinked. "Huh? Shit." He flicked his cigarette over the railing, watched with detached interest to see if it hit someone on its way down. He grinned faintly when they heard a cat yowl, then looked to Zack and shrugged. "Sorry. Can't help it. Position and all that. And, you know, had a drink--or, fifty--before coming over. So my mouth. Slipped. Tseng can kill me with his brain. You know? So don't let him know I slipped, Zack, or I'm going to sic my ghost on you. Grope you in your bed, all that nonsense."

Cloud only stared. "Your position?"

Both Zack and Reno stared right back at Cloud and Reno leaned closer. "My position? The goddamn suit doesn't give it away?"

Zack went right back to glaring at Reno again. "No, don't try to sneak your way out of it. Why the hell would the Turks be interested in a monster extermination?"

Reno jammed his hands into his coat pockets, shrugging as he did. "If I told you, I'd have to kill you." He grinned playfully, but the gleam in his eyes was serious, and as deadly as a blade in the dark. "Now, I just came over for a smoke and some talk. We've not seen each other since that last little get-together in the northlands, thanks to those Avalanche sons of bitches. So let's play nice?"

"Differences in opinion between departments, is that it?" Zack grunted, and Cloud noticed with some thanks that Zack's iron grip on his shoulder relaxed somewhat. "All right. We'll leave it at that."

"I know, I know. I can't touch your friends, or else you'll kill me." Reno grinned. "See you after you get back, right? You still owe me some booze from that last game of ours." He looked to Cloud, his grin becoming something subtly different, though exactly what it was Cloud didn't know. "See you around, kid." He turned on his heels, waving over his shoulder as he left.

"Crazy bastard, that one," Zack muttered, "but fun enough. Usually. When shit like this doesn't happen."

Cloud looked up at his friend. "What did happen?"

"He shouldn't know about your mission. Because if he knows, then he knows who you're going with." Zack frowned. "Which means the Turks are watching our friend. Not too unusual. He knows about their surveillance, but there was an incident once and he... formally requested that the surveillance be stopped. We both knew that it wouldn't stop them, but that slip of Reno's... too obvious. He wouldn't slip like that unless something was up." A sigh, and Zack rubbed his forehead with his hand. "Should've known better. This week's giving me a headache, yet."

They were inside the apartment, relishing the warmth of some hot chocolate, when another thought occurred to Cloud.

"I didn't know you smoked," Cloud said, sitting on their couch and wrapped up in a spare blanket.

"Oh?" Zack wandered over with his own mug of hot chocolate in his hands, sat down beside Cloud. There came a moment of shifting as Cloud wordlessly offered to share the blanket, which Zack gladly took. It required them to sit exactly side-by-side, and Zack rested an arm around Cloud's shoulders again. Cloud muttered about Zack taking advantage of his height, but he decided he could do the same and rested his head against Zack's shoulder. There was a familiarity to it that he liked, a kind of rightness.

"It's a dirty habit I picked up in Wutai," Zack said finally, having gotten comfortable himself. "Soldiers and troopers alike... Smoking was a social thing we all did. Like drinking. Only, got a little more addicted to it than I would've liked. Easier to break off when you're a Soldier, though... only do it now when I'm nervous, and someone else around me has them. Like Reno."

Cloud frowned. "He's weird."

"Comes with the profession, I guess."

"A... Turk?" He had heard of them, of course. It was impossible to work in the military divisions of Shinra without hearing of them. "He didn't like me."

"Don't say that," Zack said with a chuckle. "He's just very... well, it's part of his personality."

"You like him?"

"Usually." A pause, and Cloud looked up to see Zack's eyes grown distant. "You'll be okay while I'm gone, right?"

He nodded. "I think so. I know Clemson's and Ruggard's numbers, if there is something."

"You know what I mean."

A pause, and he lowered his gaze, leaned against his friend again. "Yeah. I think so."

"Our friend may treat you--well, he's who he is, and his position... so do your best. Like you always do." Zack's voice warmed up again, and he sipped on his hot chocolate. "Just keep punctual, try not to trip over your own legs. If nothing else, this mission'll get you familiar enough with him being around that you won't have to worry about that ever again." Cloud nodded, and Zack set both of their mugs--now empty--aside on the coffee table. "He asks about you, you know? I think he's curious. I've warned him, though--sometimes, he doesn't think or see some things. Not like anyone else does, anyway."

Cloud shook his head, yawned. "I'm not--scared. Nervous, not scared."

"Well, at least with chocobo, you won't have to worry about motion sickness, right?" Zack yawned, too, cracking his jaw and wincing. "Oi, I think it's time to get to bed."

"Too comfortable. Don't wanna move."

"No, no, can't do that... Got a mission, after all."

"You leave after I have to go to class. You get to sleep in. I'll be the one who deals with it. So?"

A sigh, but Zack started to shift. "No, better not..."

Reluctantly, they got ready for sleep. There was the weekend, with Saturday classes and nothing else but guard duty, before Monday when he would leave for the mission. Cloud crawled into his bed with his eyes heavy, but before he fell asleep he couldn't help but realize that sitting like that with Zack had felt as natural as anything else... maybe too much. It worried him enough to wonder if perhaps Zack had felt that, too.

When he turned over onto his side, away from the windows, he saw Zack's eyes watching him. The light gleam from the Mako was subdued, but it was still there. It didn't help his worry, but before he could turn back onto his other side, Zack closed his eyes and did it instead.

***

The night before his mission was not a good one. It was frightfully similar to another night in Junon, one he had managed to push so far back into his mind he tricked himself into believing he had forgotten it. But it turned out that, even when the rumors weren't so strong, there was still jealousy to contend with, and jealousy earned more active enemies than mere rumors could.

He went limping on his way home, and spent a long time in the shower, long after the hot water went out.

The next morning was an early one. He got up aching, went to the bathroom and heaved what little food he still had in his stomach. He brushed his teeth and tongue to get the taste out, brushed until, when he spat, there was a tinge of brown-red. He got ready in a hurry, grabbed the duffel he had packed after getting out of the shower shaking, and walked to the base with his shoulders hunched. He reported to the SOLDIER branch, where one of his instructors, nothing but pride in his strut, led Cloud out to the transportation block. The chocobo would be waiting for him on the outskirts of Midgar, and Sephiroth would be arriving shortly after, so he was to make sure he had the birds ready as soon as possible. Cloud listened as the man rambled on about what an honor it was to be chosen, even though he was a grunt, and if nothing else Cloud was thankful he was too nervous to get motion sick once the truck started on its way.

The truck had to descend down into the slums before it could go outside of Midgar, as only a few of the highways had been built that connected the floating city to the earth. He kept himself out of sight as they drove through, well aware that it was just him and the driver and the supplies. Still, no matter what looks were sent their way, nothing happened and they reached the gate to the outside.

It was his first time out of Midgar since his arrival at the city months ago. He stepped out in the badland's chill, pulling his duffel against his shoulder and the bag of supplies down in one hand. There was another trooper there, waiting with the chocobo, and he looked relieved that Cloud had arrived.

"Here you go, buddy," the trooper said, handing Cloud the reins of the two birds. "Take good care of 'em!" Then he hauled himself up into the bed of the truck, the driver opened the gate with his remote, and when the gate closed, it was just Cloud, the birds, and the badlands. The cracked dead ground looked like dead gold in the early morning sunlight, pale and wintry, though from far away any of the dustclouds picked up by the wind could almost pass as snow.

One of the chocobo nudged him with its giant blunt beak, while the other chirruped. He turned his attention to them, grinned despite how sore he felt and petted them before getting his duffel and the supply bag securely tied to the back of the chocobo he thought must have been meant for him. They were both beautiful birds, but this one had less sheen to its thick winter feathers and seemed just a bit more timid than the other, though it liked him well enough after he had petted its crest and let it rest its head on his shoulder while he checked the other.

The gate shuddered, and he looked up as it opened just wide enough for Sephiroth to slip through. Cloud caught a glimpse of a Shinra van before the gate came closed, and then saluted Sephiroth, well aware that they were on duty.

"At ease," Sephiroth murmured, glancing at the chocobo first and quickly securing his own bag to the chocobo that had yet to be burdened. He looked over the bird, glanced at Cloud's, and then finally looked at Cloud. Cloud met his gaze and wondered if it was possible that he could actually see that Sephiroth was tired. Sephiroth's own gaze looked down at him, and then he came closer, reached with a hand and touched Cloud's shoulder. Though his lips did not move, there was a tightening of his brows. "You're injured."

Cloud blinked, hastily stepped back. "It's nothing, sir."

Sephiroth's gaze sharpened, but the Commander shook his head. "We'll have plenty of time to speak of it when we're on our way. Mount."

Cloud went to his chocobo's side and heard Sephiroth mount his own bird effortlessly, but he worried about actually getting his leg up far enough to get up. The chocobo surprised him by squatting down, and once he had settled on its back it lifted up and took off after Sephiroth and his chocobo, heading south. The pre-briefing file had said that their target was in the southern range; the dragon had caused a problem by attacking transports along one of Shinra's cargo routes. Truth be told, he had never had a real briefing, but Sephiroth told him he'd be briefed when they first stopped to let the chocobo rest.

***

That night they were on the cargo route in the lower Midgar Mountains. Though the mountains lay south of Midgar, the altitude made up for the lattitude, and Cloud was glad that Sephiroth had consented to a fire, despite the possibility of the light and warmth attracting monsters. The Commander left Cloud to set up the camp while he checked the surrounding area; while Cloud unburdened the chocobo, he saw Sephiroth place a materia in one of Masamune's many slots before the man disappeared into the surrounding growth.

The Midgar Mountains were green and lush compared to the Nibel Mountains, but Cloud couldn't help but think that the plant growth in the area seemed a little strange, the trees so twisted and the vines so thick, clinging to the mountain walls, that he hoped that none of them were actually sentient. It was then that Cloud realized that there had to have been some mistake with the supplies; although there were two sleeping rolls provided, only one tent had been given them. The thought made him warm despite the chill, but he told himself it was nothing and pitched the tent, remembering all the little pointers Zack had told him.

 _Besides, it's not like you've not been in Sephiroth's bed before_ \-- But even that thought couldn't change the fact that he was completely alone with Sephiroth, and this was somehow different from their time together in the Commander's suite. He wasn't certain how.

***

Sephiroth came inside, sheathing Masamune. He brushed a few leaves from his coat, set the sword down beside his sleeping roll, then stopped and looked sharply at Cloud.

"You're awake."

Cloud nodded. "Not the dragon?"

"No. Still, a strange monster considering the area. It will make the report interesting, but it doesn't change our mission objective."

Another nod, and he huddled deeper into the roll. It wasn't so long ago that rain had started to fall and their fire had gone out, but the chill set in quickly. He shivered just watching as Sephiroth shed his wet coat, so he closed his eyes and just listened. This worked much better, until he felt the other man moving his sleeping roll. Blinking his eyes open in surprise, even with what little light he could see that Sephiroth had moved his sleeping roll right up against his own. The Commander sat down, having had already pulled off his boots and tugged off the high-necked sweater he had worn beneath his coat, then grabbed their extra blankets and pulled them so they covered both himself and Cloud.

The trooper now found himself staring at Sephiroth, who now lay down right beside him, facing him. "Umm. Body heat conservation?"

"Yes. Zack and I have done something similar before. Winter in some parts of Wutai can be harsher than one would expect."

"Their mountains at all like this?"

"No. The Wutanese mountains are much more beautiful." Sephiroth raised a hand, touched it to Cloud's cheek, fingers stroking his skin lightly. "And the Nibel Mountains?"

"They're... not like any others I've heard of." Cloud bit his lower lip. "Black stone... the plants are all weird. The forest around Nibelheim isn't so bad, but on the mountains it's... terrible."

"Did you ever climb them?"

"Sometimes. Kids weren't really supposed to play outside of town alone. Or do anything else." He closed his eyes as the fingers moved back to settle in his hair. "Too dangerous, with the wolves... and sometimes, even, a dragon... never stopped mom from going into them, though..." The other man made a curious sound, and Cloud continued, "She collects herbs, makes potions and things. It's all we really have to get by with."

Sephiroth made another sound, and Cloud couldn't help it; he sighed when the fingers left his hair. The comfort disappeared in a second when the fingers touched his side, knowingly, even beneath the blankets. He hissed in pain and looked up to see Sephiroth's eyes on his face, brow knit.

"What happened?"

"Accident," Cloud said. "Training."

"Hnn." The hand drifted, moving up to Cloud's arm, touching an awkward bandage. "With real blades? Doubtful."

He swallowed, but couldn't pull his eyes away. "I'm used to it."

"I'd heard something of this. Not from Zack..." Sephiroth shook his head, fingers suddenly prying beneath the bandage and pulling it away, without ripping it. He reached and put it aside, picked up Masamune instead. Cloud stared, wondering what the man was up to, but then realized when Sephiroth looked at him again that he had several materia equipped in Masamune. "A cure spell accelerates the healing process, but it requires energy from the body to do so. You'll feel weak when it's done, because you're not a Soldier and your stamina can't quite keep up with it." Cloud nodded, could feel the swell of energy as Sephiroth cast the spell, and held back a sound of pain as his injuries healed. As soon as it was done, Sephiroth set Masamune aside, and then his hand went back to stroking Cloud's cheek. "From now on, I don't want you to hide that from me. Even if you think it makes you appear weak."

"Yes, sir," Cloud whispered, curling up on himself. It wasn't quite how he had imagined it would feel, but what Sephiroth had said about the weakness was obvious. "I'm sorry..."

"Don't." The other man came closer, and he clenched his eyes shut even as the arms came around him, gathered him against Sephiroth's body, cradled his head closer. "The only marks I want to see on your body are the ones I give you."


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

The next day they were much farther up into the mountains. Sephiroth stopped him to check on something he heard. When he came back to the stand of trees where Cloud stood with the two chocobo, he nodded.

"Found it," was all Sephiroth said, and mounted. "We're not close enough to strike at it, yet. A bit further. But it was here, and recently."

Cloud stared at the Commander. "How... how do you know?"

"Smelled it first," Sephiroth muttered as he heeled his chocobo forward at a careful pace. "Look up at the stone wall on the right of the path--you'll see it just as we come out from the trees. The trail is obvious, and it leads up further. There's a cave up there." The Commander glanced back at him, and grinned, a small turning of the corner of his lips, as if he heard Cloud's obvious though unvoiced question. "I've been here before. The cave was originally investigated as a site for a possible Mako Reactor. That might explain why the dragon's there. They're attracted to areas with high levels of Mako."

The SOLDIER candidate frowned. "So why didn't they? Build one?"

"No profit in it, being here in the middle of nowhere."

They came out of the trees, and though the left of the path descended into a sharp pit, from which tall trees grew, on the right side of the path rose a sheer rock wall. Its side was scored with various holes and markings, curved and ragged lines. Some of them appeared quite old, but the smear of blood along the lowest part of the wall suggested a recent kill. They continued on the path, even as the rock wall curved off and became hidden by forest again. Sephiroth led Cloud along the wall, until the black opening of the cave came into sight, unhidden as all the trees that could have grown before it had been torn down, deep grooves carved into every trunk.

Sephiroth dismounted, and gave Cloud a look that conveyed his order well. They had already been over the plan before--Sephiroth would engage, and Cloud would remain with the birds, and only retreat if he was threatened. He was not to engage. This frustrated him as much as it comforted him, but he reminded himself he was there to guard the birds and observe. It wasn't likely he'd manage to do anything to a real dragon anyway, especially not with his weak machine gun.

He took the reins of Sephiroth's chocobo, and nudged his own closer to the rock wall, to the trees, so it might be less likely for the dragon to see him. He couldn't help but think, as Sephiroth disappeared into the greenery, that it would probably need to keep concentrated on the obvious threat.

***

The dragon screamed as it toppled over the cliffs. Sephiroth stood at the edge, staring down after it as it fell, wind blowing his hair and coat wildly. Beneath Cloud, the chocobo was trembling, though whether from the sight of the dragon or the cold on the wind--Cloud was too oblivious to know. Instead, his eyes were concentrated on the most important thing.

If Zack had defeated the dragon, there would be a swagger in his step, a certain tilt to his grin, a flourish of the sword as a kind of victory pose. Cloud would be in awe, but he would laugh, too.

Sephiroth only followed the monster's fall with his eyes, before straightening. The wind blew hard, but Cloud could see steam rising from the gentle curve of Masamune. Then Sephiroth turned and looked at him.

***

The chocobo calmed down easily enough, once Cloud dismounted and pet them. They followed closely behind him as he, in turn, followed Sephiroth back to the cavern's entrance, avoiding all the toppled trees, the noxious smell of toxin coated thick on the bark, having eaten one tree in half already. Cloud left the chocobo at the cavern's maw when Sephiroth motioned for him to follow.

The Commander stopped him before they escaped the sunlight entirely, and pointed. There, clumped together against the wall in something that looked disturbingly like the green jello served sometimes in the mess hall, were eggs, each the size of Cloud's head.

"There was a reason it was so antagonistic," Sephiroth muttered. "These were laid recently. We'll have to destroy them."

"Doesn't it take two, sir?" Cloud asked, looking nervously into the darkness beyond. "What if another's around?"

Sephiroth shook his head. "The remains of the other are in the back of the cave. The one I fought--the female--was eating it." He looked down at the cadet. "I'm going to destroy the eggs. Stay with the chocobo, and we'll head down to the base of the mountains. We'll camp there, and then return to Midgar in the morning."

"Sir." Cloud lingered, glanced at the eggs and the back of the cave, and started back toward the entrance. He could feel Sephiroth's eyes on him, could even tell when they turned away. When he reached the chocobo, one of them butted its beak underneath his arm, demanding attention. He stroked its crest absently, and scratched the other with the hopes that it would get his hands to stop from shaking.

There was something about knowing that the Commander was the best there ever was, the best there would ever be. It was another thing to see it, and another to wonder how the hell he'd ever manage to be even half that good, even if he made it into SOLDIER--

Sephiroth returned with the smell of burning flesh clinging to his cloak. The Commander glanced back into the cave, toward the fires, but Cloud could not bring himself to look. The smell was enough. He didn't know why, but it made him nauseous.

***

The stream was little better than frozen, but there weren't any blocks of ice floating along it and, truth be told, neither of them smelled so great after venturing into the dragons' den. Cloud rubbed down the chocobo with some strange dusty material that came from a ranch out to the east, meant to clean the feathers--he took his time combing the feathers afterwards, listening to the birds coo in appreciation before having the blankets tossed over them for the night. They took to grazing, and by the time it was done and Cloud finished gnawing on a rations bar, Sephiroth returned from his usual recon and announced the area seemed relatively safe from monsters. Cloud had already pitched the tent, so Sephiroth took a look at the camp, unwrapped his own rations bar, and suggested Cloud enjoy the stream.

Enjoying the stream wasn't quite what Cloud did, but he reminded himself that he had gone swimming in the Nibel waters in early and late winter before--he hadn't gotten hypothermia yet, and the waters here weren't frozen, so. He used an extra towel, dunked it in the cold, shivered as he put it to his skin--dunked it in again, wrung it out over his head. The bar of soap was standard supply and smelled of nothing but chemicals that, to the Shinra, meant "clean", but he was able to work up some lather with it. The body was first, the arms, the legs, the chest. He was about to pull on some of his clothes so he wasn't completely naked while washing his hair, but stopped when something fell to the ground nearby with a thunk.

Cloud blinked when he saw Sephiroth's shoulder armor and leather coat lying so close, his mind somehow unable to connect what he saw with the conclusion that should have been obvious.

"One day, I'll take you to one of the hot springs," Sephiroth murmured, as the rest of his clothing joined the heap. Cloud stared at the Commander. It hurt, Sephiroth was so--perfect. There was little more to it than that. Only the late winter light on the pale skin, touching the silver hair... the green eyes looking at him, and he knew Sephiroth had been watching him watch himself. There was a smile, though, slight, and something in the eyes as they left his gaze, roved elsewhere.

Cloud swallowed, looked back at the water. "I w-would like that, very much."

"Mm."

***

The birds cried when Cloud handed the reins over. The employee at the gate thanked him for taking good care of them, and with a few clucks began to try to drag the birds away. They dug in their claws, and Cloud would have had a harder time leaving them, if Sephiroth hadn't announced the arrival of their truck. Everything seemed to be fine, until the back doors opened, and Cloud saw two men in dark blue suits standing in the back of the truck. There was another man in the truck, as well, wearing a white labcoat, his long dark hair pulled back--eyes hidden by his spectacles.

Sephiroth ignored the two men in the blue suits. His eyes were concentrated on the scientist.

"Professor." He glanced at one of the suits, one also with dark hair, though this one wore it loose about his shoulders. The other one was so tall Cloud thought his height rivaled Sephiroth's, and was bald--Cloud tried not to stare at them, but he remembered Zack's "friend" Reno, suddenly realized what Reno had meant by his "position." "Tseng," Sephiroth continued. "Debriefing is to occur at the building."

"We thought we would save some time," the scientist said, not moving from his place at the wall. "Events have occurred in your absence that requires we advance the schedule."

"Your schedule," Sephiroth muttered, but got into the back of the truck. Cloud hurried after, and was pulled most of the way up by the bald man, who then closed the doors. The scientist knocked irritably against the window separating the back of the truck with the driver's compartment, and the truck started up.

"That's the SOLDIER candidate who accompanied you?" the scientist muttered, adjusting his spectacles. Cloud stood stiffly at attention, though he did not salute and the wavering of the truck--and his stomach--made it hard to keep up. "Small, isn't he?"

"I chose Strife specifically for this mission," Sephiroth said, "and he is out of your jurisdiction, Hojo." He looked to Cloud, and nodded to the corner farthest away from Hojo. "At ease, Strife."

"Sir." He did as he was told, perching on the crate in the corner, and looking to the window as Tseng spoke up.

"Give your report. The President's interested to hear of anything out of the ordinary."

Sephiroth's report was, as Cloud thought it would be, concise. The professor began asking questions afterward, regarding the dragons, the eggs, what kind of structures were inside the cave, what materials had held the eggs to the wall... Though he had tried to avoid looking at the others in the truck by staring out the window, his motion sickness began to kick in and he pulled his gaze away, one hand clenching over his stomach as the truck lurched. He glanced up just in time to see the bald man turn his head--though he couldn't see the eyes behind the shades, he could feel the gaze shift from him to Sephiroth--and the queasiness in his stomach increased. He thought they would never manage to make it back to the SOLDIER campus. When they did reach the transportation block, Sephiroth ordered Cloud to go ahead and wait outside in the hallway for dismissal--even as he did so, the professor opened his mouth, started to protest, but Cloud was out of the truck and the bald man slammed the doors shut again before he could hear anything else. He started for the hallway, worried, and grew only more surprised when the driver of the truck waved at him as he passed--because, when he looked, he recognized the shock of red hair and the scars beneath the cold blue eyes easily.

He stood out in the hall, nervous, his duffel over his shoulder. It was only five minutes before Sephiroth finally emerged, though it felt much longer.

The Commander did not dismiss him. He only started walking down the hall, and Cloud obediantly followed, as Sephiroth entered one of the officer's lounges. Cloud hesitated at the door, but there was no one inside, and it was dark, and there were no windows, only Sephiroth's green eyes staring at him expectantly from beyond the doorway. He stepped in, closed the door, listened to the automatic lock click into place.

"Sephiroth, sir?" he whispered. His own voice sounded strange to him, even though it hadn't been that long since he had used it.

"Dismissed," Sephiroth muttered, his hands going to Cloud's face, the gloves cool against his skin. "Though I'd ask you to stay a while."

Cloud dropped his duffel, removed his helmet and set it aside. He turned his face up more fully to the older man, took one of the gloved hands in both his own, pressed his cheek against the curve of the palm, the fingers.

***

"It's why you were gone, before, wasn't it?" he asked. Sephiroth nodded, eyes half-lidded as his gaze lingered on Cloud like his fingers did, touching skin beneath the unbuttoned jacket and the untucked shirt, stroking his lips, his cheeks, his hair.

"Unfortunately, I'm still required to come in for routine checks, inspections... experiments. It has been going on for a long time. I'm used to it."

Cloud sat with his eyes still closed, his own hands loosely gripping a discarded glove, the folds of Sephiroth's coat. "Doesn't mean it's good for you. To be used to it."

"Like you and your... accidents during training?"

Strangely, though it was the truth, and it was spoken by Sephiroth, and it cut straight to his weakness, he did not flinch. "I guess so. But..." He opened his eyes, looked up. "Zack doesn't know. He didn't know this time. Unless he hid it from me? He didn't think you'd want me to know?"

"No. He doesn't know. He knew of them, when we first returned from the war. He thought I put a stop to them, and that I've been going out on top-secret missions. That is the case, some of the time. The others..." The gaze hardened, flicked up toward the door. "Hojo."

Cloud nodded, even if he didn't understand everything. He could make out the undercurrents of Sephiroth's voice easily enough. "So he was there for a... check-up."

"Yes."

"Why the other men, then?"

The other man's chuckle was soft. "Security, I imagine."

"Security?"

"You shouldn't worry about them, though if you see them, notice them, even if they're not looking at you, or seem to be going in the opposite direction--if you see them, I want you to tell me." He nodded, and Sephiroth sighed. "You should be on your way. Zack will be happy to see you."

Cloud blinked. "He wouldn't be happy to see you?"

Another slight smile. "I imagine so. But I have paperwork, and other things to answer to. You should tell him I would like for you two to come by soon."

The candidate stood up, tucked his shirt back in, started buttoning up the jacket. His own gloves were still in place, but he held out Sephiroth's glove with reluctance. The other man stood from the chair they had been sitting in, took Cloud's offered hand and pulled him closer.

"Don't worry," Sephiroth breathed, his other hand ghosting down Cloud's back. "Soon."

The Commander left first, tightening the glove over his left hand as he went. Cloud stayed behind in the dark, his face burning. He stayed there until an irritable knock at the door jolted him, and with many stammering apologies he hurried out, ignoring the surprised look on the officer's face that a lowly trooper opened the door.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

The problem with going away on a mission during the weekdays meant that he had plenty of schoolwork to make up for. Though he got some time off from guard duty, it all went into making up for what he had missed in class.

Zack had wanted to celebrate. As soon as Cloud arrived home, Zack leaped off the couch where he had been watching the news, sipping a beer, and reading a magazine with questionable weapon ads. He had wanted to celebrate right then and there, get Cloud a drink--damn the age requirement, did he think anyone in Midgar actually adhered to that?--send him out to a party, keep him out late, not let him go to morning duty and take the slack for it--but Cloud felt overwhelmed, and warm and happy in Zack's welcoming hug, and had managed to mumble that he had too much to do and maybe later and Zack wasn't allowed to move.

In the end, Zack had been willing to do that, carrying him to the couch and getting him a cup of warm tea instead. He had held him then, nice and simple, and started prodding him with questions, asking how it went. When Cloud told him about the chocobo, Zack had laughed.

Still, there were classes. And there were drills and training, and although he had gone on a mission into the cold with the Commander of SOLDIER, Cloud didn't expect a miracle overnight. He knew that the other candidates were still bigger than him, most of them were faster, and now most of them had had just that much more practice. As soon as he had finished up the rest of his academic work, he put all of his extra time into training, instead.

Zack gave up on the immediate celebration, and decided to help him out by wrangling more time for them to train together out of his schedule. They managed a session each day, even during that first weekend--Zack explained he wouldn't be able to see his girl for another week, though he didn't say why--and they spent it out on the mats. Zack was a good teacher, an excellent judge of abilities, and always knew just how far to push Cloud, always knew how to encourage him, make him feel better, make him do better.

He never knew about the incident that occurred while he was away, that short time when Cloud was alone. Cloud thought it was for the best.

"So, how do you feel about him now, anyway?" Zack asked, leaning against his sword and picking up his water bottle from a nearby bench.

Cloud swallowed, not just for lack of water but out of knowing his face had just changed color, and turned away to get his training towel. He draped it around his neck, hands gripping each end of the towel. The fabric was rough against his fingers.

"Feel? I mean--"

Zack laughed, shook his head. "No, I know about that. But... with him. As a person, not just your image of him."

Cloud managed to work out his embarrassment, sat down on the bench and breathed, shutting his eyes. "Yeah. Yeah, it went well. About that. I think he likes me."

"I'd say that was obvious. Not seen him much since then, but..." Zack went to the mat where Cloud had put down his own practice sword, lifted it up easily. "He seems happier, you know? Well, maybe not happy, but content. Like a giant cat."

Cloud thought about it, then nodded, watching as Zack carried the swords across the small training gym to the wall stand. "You're right."

"Hmm?"

"I'd been wondering about that. Trying to figure it out. He's just like that, though."

"I think it's his eyes," Zack chuckled. "In any case, there was a low-ranking Soldier who made a mistake on one of his reports--the kind that can get you in serious trouble--and Sephiroth was--well, he was still strict, but he tends to go just a little bit more with the discipline with the Soldiers, because he thinks we should all know better. Instead, it was just the normal disciplinary action. That's rare, coming from him." Blue-grey eyes turned to him, mischievous, as he came back from the wall stand. "Soldiers throughout the world owe you their thanks, because for once Sephiroth isn't being as much of a tight ass as usual."

Cloud blinked. "But I didn't do anything."

"That's the good thing," Zack said, smiling and reaching out to ruffle Cloud's hair. "That's how I know it's all right. You don't have to do anything, and you still make him happy." Then Zack paused, pulled his hand loose from Cloud's hair. "You know, I think we should hit the showers."

"If you matted my hair, I will throw soap at you," Cloud said, but he grinned.

***

It was another week before Zack and Cloud managed to make it over to Sephiroth's suite, as they had used to do on Thursdays. The week before, Sephiroth had been gone for some mission, or so he said--and Cloud didn't see any more evidence of the Commander being more tired than usual, so he assumed that in this case it was just a mission, and not another "check-up."

That night, Zack announced that they were going to celebrate Cloud's mission. Sephiroth seemed completely unsurprised, and steered Cloud back to the door by the shoulders, even as Zack held up his coat when Cloud had just taken it off.

They went to a restaurant called Ten no Rousoku, a Wutanese place that had served Sephiroth on enough occasions that the family who owned the place attended to them with the utmost respect, but without the dangerous levels of politeness and awe. It didn't stop the rest of the restaurant from staring as they walked in, but they were discreetly directed to a private room in the back, and there Cloud found himself sitting on a cushion between Sephiroth and Zack at a low-lying table on tatami mats, and Sephiroth casually informed him that the same family owned hot springs up in the Midgar Mountains, a fairly exclusive place.

"Gods, I remember it up there," Zack said, enthusiastically perusing the menu. "Dammit, Seph, how am I supposed to choose what to eat? It's like, I want to have everything. But I can't eat it all, my stomach just isn't big enough."

"You could always get the usual," Sephiroth responded, and then looked down at Cloud. "It's gorgeous there. They would have it closed, now, for maintenance among other things, but it should be opening in early spring."

"That's not too far away, is it?" Zack asked, looking down at his watch. "Gods. Oi, kiddo, you've got exams soon. No wonder you didn't want to celebrate before. I'm sorry, I'd forgotten."

"Oi," Cloud drawled, attempting to mimic Zack's intonation even as he poked his friend in the side, "I don't expect you to keep up with my schedule. It's hard enough just dealing with yours."

Zack grinned shamelessly, sitting up straighter. "Well, you know, it's because my skills are so valuable--Shinra requests me left and right, it's a wonder the Vice President can tie his own shoelaces without me."

"A wonder," Sephiroth said. "But you forget. There are the Turks."

"Hell, I wouldn't want Reno tying my laces when he's drunk, let alone when he's sober."

"Wait. Shouldn't that be the other way around?" Cloud asked.

Zack and Sephiroth exchanged looks, then, while the Commander smirked, Zack shook his head. "Nope."

Cloud blinked. "So... is he drunk when he goes on missions?"

"Such things are not meant to be heard by the young... or by cadets, at any rate," Zack said. "If he knew I had told you, he might have to kill me. Damned secretive bunch. Kinda."

"As such, we might want to turn our conversations elsewhere," Sephiroth said, just as one of the doors slid open and no less than three young women in simple but delicate kimono entered, bowing. They inquired as to what the fine young sirs would be having that evening. Cloud wasn't certain what he wanted, so he let Zack choose for him, although Sephiroth requested a drink for him that Cloud had never heard of before. The women bowed again before leaving.

"You're footing the bill, right, Seph?" Zack asked. "I mean, three of them? Did you tell them this was a special occasion?"

Sephiroth shook his head. "I didn't." He looked hard at Zack. "And you didn't."

"No, not me..."

Cloud squirmed on his cushion. "Maybe it's been a while since they've seen you?"

"Or maybe someone caught you three wandering off," a calm voice said as the door slid open again, and Sephiroth and Zack immediately stood, Zack's hand darting down to pull Cloud up to his feet beside him. Immediately Zack bowed, and his hand shifted to Cloud's back and pushed, so Cloud bowed even though he had yet to see who had come in. The newcomer stepped in, and behind him followed another pair of feet. "And to clear any uncertainties, Reno does not tie my shoelaces."

"Sir." It was Sephiroth who spoke, his voice short but carrying a tone of respect. "My sincerest apologies."

"Always willing to take the heat from Donovan's back," the newcomer said. "It's nothing. You're off duty. And my father seems to enjoy perpetuating this ideal that I can't do anything for myself, so of course some of that would... drift to the lower ranks. Annoying." Shifting, and then, "I only happened to see the three of you enter, just as I was leaving the opera house up the street." A pause, and then, "But I thought, three? Since when did his entourage include a third?"

Sephiroth said nothing.

"Aren't you going to introduce us?"

"Cloud," Sephiroth said, and the tone in his voice caused Cloud to look up, first at Sephiroth, but the Commander's eyes were entirely concentrated on the man in front of them, and his eyes went, too, just as the Commander continued, "this is Vice President Rufus Shinra. Vice President, this is Cloud Strife, SOLDIER candidate."

Cloud had thought Reno's eyes had held a kind of coldness to them, when he had first met the Turk, and every time after. He even thought there was something strange to Sephiroth's eyes, though those held a bizarre quality of being hot and cold simultaneously--it was the predator in them, liquid and hard and steel whenever the need arose. But these eyes were somehow worse, colder than Reno's, more chilling than Sephiroth's. They were blue, but unlike his own they were a pale blue. He blinked in surprise when he noticed, in fact, that there were more similarities, in skin tone, in hair color, though the well-kept, shorter blond hair of the Shinra had a red sheen to it. The Vice President's eyes and face, though young, were held taut, entirely concentrated, in an expression he thought he had only seen on Sephiroth's face. It disturbed Cloud to make that kind of connection, and he wanted to look away, but he couldn't.

The Turk standing beside Rufus shifted. It was the tall man with the long black hair, though Cloud couldn't shift his gaze to get a good look at the man's face, this time. "He accompanied the Commander on a mission to the mako cave in the Midgar Mountains, sir."

"Freed up our cargo routes, didn't they?" Rufus mumbled distractedly, his eyes darting up and down Cloud's form. Finally, he smiled, and held out his hand. "Cloud Strife. Unlike my father, I'll remember that name."

Cloud hesitated, but didn't think he could refuse. He held out his hand, kept to his military precision even when Rufus's grip took his hand, held it in a long moment. Rufus finally pulled away, looked to Sephiroth, Zack.

"They're charging the meal to me, so feel free to have whatever you desire. It's the least I can do for the outstanding things you have done for the company, Commander."

"Thank you, sir," Sephiroth muttered, and inclined his head in a kind of bow, though not nearly so deep as the one Zack had offered.

Rufus started to turn, looked back at Zack, then Sephiroth, and finally Cloud again, a smirk turning up his lips. "Think nothing of it."

The Vice President and the Turk left. The three exchanged looks, though Zack finally sighed and slumped back down to his cushion.

"Gods. I think the bastard took my appetite with him. Son of a bitch."

"Hnn." Sephiroth sat down as well, as Cloud followed Zack's suit and slumped. "We'll discuss it later. We've already ordered. He's paying the bill. We'll eat. I won't insult the family here because of him."

"Well, we've really let our guards down, letting Rufus catch us out like that," Zack said. "I mean, before, I wouldn't have considered it such a big deal. But now? Especially with that shit he just pulled?"

"What do you mean by before?" Cloud asked, though he had the feeling he knew.

Zack shrugged his shoulders, discomfort in every stifled movement. "Before you."

The candidate nodded, dropping his gaze back down to the tatami mat beneath them. "I hope the food here is very good."

"It is," was all Sephiroth said, and it was all any of them said until the women entered again, shuffling on their feet and presenting them with their meals. One set a special cup filled with a clear liquid beside Cloud's plate, as well as a glass of water. It was the drink Sephiroth had ordered for him.

When Cloud threw up, later that night, back at his and Zack's apartment, he tried to tell himself that it was because of the strength of the drink.

***

The Thursday visits were called off from that point on. None of them addressed it. Just, the next Thursday night, Cloud came home and worked on his studies. Zack said nothing, they had dinner as they usually did, and though Cloud kept sneaking glances at the clock, Zack finally admitted that he had no report to take over. He had already taken it to Sephiroth while the Commander was in his office. It wasn't said without sympathy, and Zack walked by and put a hand on Cloud's shoulder, gave him that familiar squeeze that was usually a comfort. He thought he would be fine with it, and later that night, when Zack wasn't expecting it because he was rinsing off plates to put in the dishwasher, he gave his friend a hug. They still didn't speak a word of it, though.

But Cloud never received any of Sephiroth's quiet signals to come by his office or his suite, either. This bothered him, especially when he realized that, next Thursday, and the Thursday after, they wouldn't be going back to Sephiroth's suite. He didn't dare mention it to Zack, and tried to throw himself into his studies instead. He did ask, though, if Zack had seen their friend, had spoken to him since then. Zack gave Cloud a look, then said, "Well, sure, he's been around the campus. You mean you haven't seen him? I thought for sure some of the times he was looking for you. Damned if he'd let--well, if he would stop talking to you entirely because of it."

Zack scratched his chin, thinking, and Cloud kept copying the same sentence down in his notes, over and over again, afraid to stop writing even though he had no idea what he was copying.

"He was always in the training center. Hey. Maybe he was looking for you while you were in class? Or training? So he couldn't exactly interrupt the lesson. You know they've got those little viewing rooms."

Cloud only nodded, wondered, then, if Sephiroth had been watching him struggle. He didn't know whether to feel comforted or ashamed. It was more shame that settled in his stomach, and the next day in class he was soundly thrashed by his opponent. Zack put on a healing salve for him when he saw the welts on Cloud's skin, and apologized for having said anything at all.

Exams came and went. Cloud avoided the first low cut, the cut that weeded out those that simply weren't academically inclined at all. Soldiers, Zack said, had to be more intelligent than the sentient meatloaf served in the mess hall. Physically, he was given high marks for his speed running the physical courses, though he was marked for needed improvement in several other areas. At least he managed to win two of his judged matches with the sword, and his handgun skills were, though far from perfect, not at all within the threat of failure.

Exam scores were posted in the mess hall the day after the exams were taken. The cadets were crowded all about the scores, staring, comparing their placements among the other cadets, some worrying, some cheering, most jeering at someone or another. Cloud stood in the back and scoured the listing until he found his scores, double-checked the numbers and blinked. He didn't feel more confident, oddly enough, only a dull kind of relief. He wasn't as high as he would have liked, but there was some buffer between him and those who weren't coming back.

He was on his way back to the apartment when the group, the same that had jumped him before his mission with Sephiroth, caught up with him.

***

They threw him into the back of a truck--like all of the others the Shinra used for the military, completely covered--that sat amid a line of trucks in the parking deck. Two stood watch while the other five clambered in. He had just gotten up, one hand feeling the wetness along his side, and looked up as the first fist collided with his cheek. The second followed more quickly to his other side, and the next pounded him solidly in the ribs. He fell against the front of the truck and coughed on blood when he tried to breathe.

Their leader--he still hadn't figured out the name--took out his pocket knife. He always had that damned pocket knife.

"Told you to drop out, country boy," the young man growled, grabbing him by the hair and jerking his head back. "Didn't you get the clue? Surprised the Great Sephiroth could even stand looking at you for as long as he did, didn't kill you on the trip just to put you outta your goddamned misery--you know what the drill sergeants did to us while you were away, you fag? Do you have any goddamned idea? And this whole time, we had it shoved down our throats what a fuckin honor it was, like some scrawny little bitch from some gods forsaken hellhole could ever--are you listening?!"

He had, he had heard everything. It was hard not to, but he couldn't nod or shake his head, his hair was being held so tightly. But he didn't cry, even when they were all done, even when they all went away, when the two on watch had heard a patrol coming. They threatened him, of course, told him that if he wasn't quiet when the patrol came they'd finish the job next time they saw him, and then they disappeared.

He lay curled up in the corner of the truck, breathing bloodily into his jacket, shaking and listening. The patrol came and went. The patrol came and went two more times before he was able to pick himself up, struggled to the edge of the truck, looked outside after the receding backs of the patrol. The parking deck wasn't lit well. He had no problem getting out without being seen.

When Zack came home that night, ready to congratulate Cloud on his grades, the SOLDIER candidate was nowhere to be found.

***

He sat up with a scream still on his lips, hands rising to his chest, feeling for blood but there wasn't any blood there. The sudden movement wrenched his body, and he bit back another sound of pain as he arched back and fell to the mattress, eyes clamped shut against the light in the room.

"Some nightmare you were having, kiddo."

That voice wasn't Zack's. Cloud knew that voice, and he forced his eyes open into a squint, stared at the blurry dark blue shadow leaning against the wall, beside the bed. He blinked, and his gaze came into better focus--it was definitely the Turk standing there, twirling his nightstick absently between his fingers.

"Guess I shouldn't be too surprised, considering where the hell I found you." The Turk flicked on the lamp beside the bed, walked across the room, out of Cloud's immediate vision. He wasn't going to turn to look, instead stayed on his side, curled up tightly even though it hurt like hell for a second. The other lights in the room turned off, so there was only the pale white glow from the lamp. Reno came back, took to leaning against the wall again. The angle of the lampshade made it hard for Cloud to look up at him, so he just shut his eyes. He didn't doubt that that was what the Turk wanted.

"I've called Zack. Couldn't reach him, so I called that Clemson guy. He and his buddy are out looking for Zack right now. He'll be here soon nough." Reno cursed, and Cloud heard the click of a lighter, smelled the smoke in the air. "You're in the infirmary. The staff took one look at you and sent you straight back. How the hell do they know you that goddamned well? It's like they had this room waiting for you."

Raised voices came from the other side of the small room's door. Cloud recognized both of the voices, felt some relief when the door opened and the first words out of Zack's mouth were, "Cloud!" and then, "Reno, put that shit out, this is a goddamned infirmary, not your fuckin lounge!"

The nurse whimpered, "Sirs, please, watch your language!"

Reno and Zack said simultaneously, "Sorry, ma'am," and then said, "Dammit." The door closed, and Zack was at Cloud's side. He opened his eyes only when he felt Zack's shadow in the way, felt Zack's hand on his face. He recognized Zack's hand by the roughness on the pads of his fingers, the callouses. It was comforting to open his eyes and see Zack there.

"Oi. Oi." His friend turned, looking at the Turk. "Where the hell--how did you--how long have you--"

"Try one question at a time," Reno muttered. "First, on his way out to the drainage ditch--which has been overflowing since that last storm came through the other night--second, I can't tell you, and third, for a coupla hours. The doc patched him up pretty well, considering he can't use a materia on the kid. Regulations and that." The Turk moved; his hand smudged the cigarette out on the edge of a coaster occupied by a glass of water on the nightstand, and then flicked the butt into an unseen trash can. "Seemed to know the procedure pretty well."

"Shut up," Zack muttered. "You don't know anything."

"Know enough, now," Reno snapped back. "Enough to wonder how the hell he's still in the program--why haven't the shrinks kicked him out?"

"They nearly did," Zack growled, and then cursed, quietly and quickly, which was how Cloud knew that he had slipped. Zack turned again to look at Cloud, brow wrinkled, but this time Cloud drew away from his hand.

"I'm fine," Cloud muttered.

"Like hell you are." Zack drew a deep breath, raised his hand to his face. "The drainage ditch? Gods."

"A truck." He turned onto his other side, away from the two others. "In the parking deck. I don't know which one. I couldn't see when they took me there."

"You don't know who?" Strangely, it was Reno who asked, and Cloud said nothing. He heard the Turk sigh, push off from the wall. "Hell, whatever. None of my goddamned business."

Zack murmured under his breath and followed the Turk out. Cloud could hear their voices, but they became a comfortable drone in the background. Listening to them, he fell asleep, and this time when he dreamed, the green was soft, embracing. There was just the green, and then there was nothing at all, but sleep.

***

Since exams had passed, the academic schedule was technically on holiday for two weeks. Drills and duties were still in effect, however, and because Cloud missed his morning patrol duty the following morning, he had to make up for it by running laps. Troops laughed and whooped as he ran about the parade grounds in the late morning rain, and he ran until the pain from his injuries grew from a stab in his shoulder and stomach to a repeated hammering of his body--he nearly fell, but his officer stopped him before he could, and shouted for him to clean his skinny ass and make sure he didn't miss another patrol ever again. It wasn't kindness, but it was the closest he would ever get from any of the officers.

He showered in water so hot it nearly scalded him, and after drying off and changing into civilian clothes, he went outside. His umbrella had been stolen, though he didn't think it would be that much use to whomever had taken it--it had two or three holes that let in more rain than it stopped. But it had been something like protection, and now he had nothing.

He didn't want to go back to the apartment. Zack had been kind, of course, but his kindness hurt Cloud more than it healed him right then. He didn't want it. He didn't want to go back. It would ache too much.

He spent the day out in the rain. He went to Midgar's park, which was all but deserted, and stared at the way the rain water flooded the city's artificial lake. There were ducks and swans enjoying themselves in the water; he thought of the strange mountain birds from home. He thought of his mother, and knew he should write to her. He couldn't remember the last time he had.

The rain stopped, or at least, it stopped hitting him on the head. Confused, it took him a moment to realize there was an umbrella over his head, and then he recognized the tall presence standing behind him without having to turn around, to look.

"You'll catch cold," was all the Commander said. The rest was said by the gloved hand that rested on Cloud's shoulder, the unspoken command that said, _Come with me_.

So Cloud did.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

They did not go straight to Sephiroth's suite. They walked all along the flooded shore of the lake, and then Sephiroth took him down several streets Cloud had never seen before, but he thought they were heading back to the officers' apartments. He was right, and it was only as Sephiroth opened up the side gate for the complex that Cloud realized that the way they had come were the ways Zack was less likely to come--and though he first felt badly for it, some part of him was relieved, too.

The guard dogs looked up at them and wagged their tails from beneath their doghouses, but didn't seem to want to be out in the rain anymore than anyone else. Cloud smiled weakly at them, but Sephiroth did not pause for them, only kept walking, and Cloud hurried to keep up. They reached the complex's covered walkways, and Sephiroth closed the umbrella, and Cloud looked up at the Commander's face for the first time in several weeks, just as Sephiroth pulled his gaze away, looked at the stairwell that would take them up to his floor.

"Not yet," the older man breathed, and Cloud wasn't certain what he meant, but nodded anyway. He started up ahead of the Commander, went on to the door even though he couldn't open it. Sephiroth did, let him inside first, and immediately moved to pull Cloud's drenched coat from his shoulders. Cloud shivered, struggled to get his boots off, pulled his feet free of the wet socks, while Sephiroth removed his own coat, hung it on the peg beside the door. Cloud rubbed his arms, waiting, heard the soft thud of Sephiroth's own boots beside the door before suddenly the other man's arms came around him and lifted him. Cloud went easily, even though he was surprised, didn't struggle like he might have if Zack had been the one doing the lifting. He was set down in Sephiroth's bathroom, and waited for Sephiroth to leave, as he had always done when Cloud used his shower.

But Sephiroth didn't leave, and this time when Cloud looked up, his eyes met Sephiroth's.

He didn't think it was in the other man's nature to be vulnerable, to be wounded. To appear even close to the breaking point would be unforgivable. So when he saw Sephiroth's eyes, even as they did nothing but look at him, even as they grew heavy-lidded--not from pleasure, but from something else, a tightening about the brows, the thin line of his mouth--he felt himself tremble, responding to that unseen strain like he had been strung out himself.

Sephiroth's ungloved hands moved to touch his face, fingers first stroking his cheeks, then cupping them, before finally moving down and pulling at the wet shirt that clung to Cloud's body. Cloud let it go unresisting, said and did nothing even as the older man undid his jeans, jerked them down so they finally settled around Cloud's ankles. Cloud dropped his eyes and pulled down the final garment himself, stepped out of the pile and looked to the shower stall. Sephiroth's fingers trailed along his side, touched the bruises there, the soaked bandages, before he bent down and gathered the clothes from the floor.

"Go ahead," he said, and stepped out.

***

After he was done, his clothes were gone, but there was an oversized silk robe, something that looked Wutanese, hanging on the back of the door. He pulled it on and tied the sash around his waist, stepped out onto the dark carpet of Sephiroth's bedroom floor, just as Sephiroth came in. He murmured that Cloud do whatever he like, and then he went into the bathroom and closed the door.

Cloud didn't feel like reading, didn't feel like eating, didn't feel like much of anything. He sat on Sephiroth's bed and watched the rain. The sky grew steadily darker, but he didn't care. He hoped Zack would go see his girl, that Zack wouldn't worry about him. He didn't want to go back to the apartment. He thought all of these things, reached with one hand and felt the aching strips on his body. He had gotten rid of the bandages before showering, had winced when the water had touched his skin, and now it felt weak, stupid, that he still had any in the first place. He knew how to punch, how to kick, how to bite, how to claw, even if he couldn't use all of the things he was supposed to be learning in class. He was supposed to be better, not stuck in the same place--always stuck in the same place, no matter how hard he ran.

He lay down on the bed. It felt like it had been a long time since he had been here, but when he tried to think about the last time he had, his head hurt, so he let that thought go and went back to watching the rain. Finally, he felt the mattress shift. Two arms came around him, one hand clutched tightly around something that let out a green glow. The other worked underneath the robe, touched his skin, rested over the largest of the injuries. A warm mouth descended against his neck, and he shivered as the spell went to work, and the materia was dropped--it fell against the bedspread and he accidentally knocked it off when he turned onto his back, heard it when it hit the carpet with a soft chime. Then it was out of his mind, as Sephiroth kissed him, one hand tangling itself in Cloud's hair and the other sliding down Cloud's side. They separated and Sephiroth stared at him, said nothing but practically lifted Cloud off the bed to pull down the blankets and sheets, set him down again just to part the robe from Cloud completely. Only then did Cloud notice that Sephiroth was just as naked as himself, but the heat that stirred in him was less embarrassment and definitely something more, the kind of heat he had only had to himself and his thoughts those nights when Zack was gone and he was alone and--

"You won't be going back tonight," Sephiroth said, his voice a rough whisper.

Cloud's own breath shook as he drew it. "I would have asked to stay."

Sephiroth nodded. Some hair fell over his shoulder, and Cloud reached up, hesitant, to touch Sephiroth's face, his hair, and then the lips. The older man let him.

***

Cloud woke when he felt fingers touching his cheek, turned his head and saw Sephiroth watching him. He watched the way Sephiroth's eyes looked at him, the way they moved from his face to his neck to his shoulders to below and, ultimately, back up to his eyes.

"All right?" Sephiroth murmured.

He shifted a bit, winced, nodded. "A... a little sore."

"Mm." A hand brushed the hair from his face, a kiss against his forehead. "I'm sorry."

"I don't think you could have been any better than you--I mean--" He felt the blush, hated himself for it, though amusement touched the hard corners of Sephiroth's lips when he saw it. "It felt good."

"Only good?"

"B-better," he stammered, and was rewarded by a real laugh. "I mean, if I--if you weren't happy with me--"

"You would die," Sephiroth said, simply, and so matter-of-factly Cloud wondered just what he meant. "It is all right. You... this..." His finger touched Cloud's lips, followed their line before cupping his chin. "I heard what happened."

"Did Zack tell you?"

"No. Not for lack of trying. I found the messages on my phone after I had heard from... a different source."

He swallowed. "The Turk."

A nod, this time. "Yes. He found me not long after he had left your room at the infirmary."

"Found you...?" Cloud thought for a moment, his own brow wrinkling, and he bit his lower lip. "You were at the infirmary? Leaving it?"

"Another check-up. I hadn't felt well. What Reno told me made me angry, and... worse. It is why I didn't go straight to you."

Cloud shook his head. "You couldn't help it. And if he told you, then that might've meant that anyone could've--well, you don't like being watched, right?"

"The Turks have a way of complicating things," Sephiroth murmured, "and their real leader is even worse."

"You think they know?"

"I'm almost certain. But let them have their game. They couldn't stop this, and no matter what they want..." Sephiroth leaned down over him, whispered it in his ear. "I want you."

Cloud tried desperately not to shiver, though he couldn't stop himself when he felt the lips touch his skin, the teeth bite into his neck.

"No more of that, Cloud Strife..." The words sank into him even as the lips wandered, teeth scraped against skin, and his hands clutched uselessly at blankets, at long silver hair. "He said he found you on your way to the drainage ditch. I know it's overflowing. There are usually bodies that run through it, though not from the campus. From outside. Murders on the plate streets. Murderers and thugs come up out of the slums when it rains, they have an easier time hiding, stealing, killing. And the bodies are dumped into the ditch. Was that what you were hoping for?" Sephiroth's mouth paused above his navel, and the older man raised his head, eyes staring straight and sharp at Cloud's own gaze. "To die? To wash out with the other bodies? To lose yourself?"

Cloud's breath hitched again, and he shut his eyes.

"In that case, I'll have to take you, and keep you, so you never will," Sephiroth said, his voice close again, his lips hovering over Cloud's own. "You'll never be able to lose yourself. I'll always have you. Do you understand?"

"Yes--" It was a soft hiss, and with the answering kiss came release, relief.

***

"Cloud?! Oi, Cloud!"

He turned, smiled when he saw Zack running toward him. He even laughed when Zack picked him up, swung him into the air, hugged him so tightly his laugh was choked into a squeak. Zack laughed, too, set him down but didn't quite let him go, completely ignoring a squad of young troopers marching by who oogled such a public display of affection. Cloud didn't quite ignore them, felt the blush rise to his cheeks, but settled back on his heels and said, "Hi."

"Kiddo, you can't scare me like that," Zack said, poking him in the ribs. "After everything--if Sephiroth hadn't said that he was--I could hardly stand it." And the grin slipped. "Everything--everything all right? With that. With you and him. And me. Gods."

"Umm, you're being more incoherent than usual."

Zack looked around, then looked at the clock in the hallway. "What do you have to do today?"

Cloud shook his head. "I was going to try to do some training before coming home. I have today off."

"Mind if I help?"

"Well, you are my mentor, after all."

"Exactly!"

They found the private training gyms, saw with relief that several of them were vacant, and stopped by the SOLDIER locker room where Zack had some extra training clothes stashed. They were too big for Cloud, of course, but he didn't mind, though he had to be careful how he moved while changing--he was still sore, and he no longer had the injuries that he might have used to explain it away. Once he had them on, he tied his training belt tighter than usual to keep his pants on his waist, and looked up to see Zack hiding a smile.

"What?"

"Heh. They're huge on you."

It was during their training that Zack asked him, between kata and bouts and instructions, how he was feeling, did Sephiroth take care of him, if Cloud really didn't mind coming home. Cloud answered he was still sore from the beating; yes, Sephiroth did take care of him, and even had milk in his fridge now that Cloud could drink while visiting; and of course he was coming home. There were no indications from his friend that he had any idea just how far Cloud had gone with Sephiroth, and Cloud breathed with relief when they were done, when his limbs ached too much and his sleeplessness caught up to him.

They went back to the apartment after quick showers. Zack ordered a pizza to be delivered while Cloud lay on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, sprawled on his back, hand resting on his forehead.

***

The ground beneath his feet felt oddly. Cloud looked up at the old water tower, thought it had never looked taller. He reached up with his young hands, jumped and grabbed the edge of the first tier with his fingertips. It was a strain to pull himself up, but he managed, and sat on the main body of the water tower while he caught his breath. He noticed there was brick, then, on the circle. There had never been brick before.

A door opened. Someone came out of the inn and it wasn't anyone Cloud had ever seen before. It was a man in a dark blue suit. Cloud wondered if it was one of the strangers who occasionally came to ask questions about the dilapidated mansion, but someone else came out of one of the houses and it wasn't who it was supposed to be, either. It was someone Cloud didn't recognize. He called out to them, but they ignored him, started talking to each other.

Worried, he pushed himself off and landed on the bricks, wincing at the impact. Then he went to his house, knocked on the door. No one answered, and he wondered if his mother was out looking for herbs. So he opened the door and went inside.

The smell was wrong. It was the first thing he noticed, like someone had burned the meat they were fixing for dinner. The doorknob beneath his fingers seemed to grow hot at his mere touch, and he pulled his hand away. And then there were things. Little things. A vase of flowers that had never been there before, a poster missing from the wall. The beds had the wrong sheets. When he touched a stool beside the door that had never been there before, char came off onto his hands, though the wood looked clean. He heard a footstep in the kitchen, and looked up.

"Mama--" he started, but stopped when he saw who it was.

The strange woman didn't hear him.

"Hey," he said, stepping closer. He stomped his foot. "Hey! This isn't your house!"

The lady opened up a cupboard and took down a couple of pots and pans. The Shinra's red diamond was etched on the handle of each.

"Get out!" His eyes started to tear up. "Don't ignore me! Please!" He started forward, tried to grab the lady's dress, but the fabric seemed to slip right through his fingers. He tried again, and again, but nothing happened. His eyes darted up to her, but she ignored him, hummed some tune that wasn't one of his mother's mountain hymns or lullabies. "Mama... where's Mama...?"

He turned, ran outside again. It was overclouded, dark, and a familiar voice, a voice he would recognize forever and ever, said, "Mother is beyond the mountains." He looked to the water tower, watched as Sephiroth stepped out from its shadow, eyes hard and cold, Masamune in his left hand. He raised his other, an open invitation.

***

"Oi, Strife. Strife!"

Cloud jolted awake, nearly bumping his head against Clemson's. Clemson darted back with a muffled curse, and then touched him on the shoulder. Cloud startled away from the simple contact, and his fellow member of Zack's zeta squad looked at him with concern, catching his eyes.

"Hey, Strife, you all right? I mean, I'm not really supposed to offer to take your place or anything, but--"

He shook his head, reached for his helmet. "Did I--what's going on?"

"So far, nothing. The enemy's still hiding out behind their little barricades. Zack's not figured out yet the best way to smoke em out without damaging too much of the surroundings--we really ought to try to keep this place intact." Clemson looked over his shoulder, unable to keep down a shudder. "The mako's too concentrated round here. A big explosion in the middle of this? We wouldn't even be a coupla bloody smears on the side of the damned crater, and I'm not even gonna guess how big that would be." A pause, and then, "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Sure, why?" he asked, pulling on his jacket and quickly doing the buttons, checking his belt, retying the laces of his boots.

"You're really pale." Clemson yanked his glove off with his teeth, pressed his fingers against Cloud's forehead, cursed so much he dropped his glove. "Holy shit, you've got a fever--Ruggard! Oi, Ru--"

"James," Cloud hissed, looking at the surrounding forest worriedly, "not so loud!"

Clemson sat down, shook his head. "Like hell I'm letting you take guard duty when you're that sick, kiddo. I'm his second, don't think I won't pull rank on you--oi, Ruggard, there you are."

Ruggard scuttled through the dark and around the nearby, empty sleeping rolls with the kind of ease that made Cloud jealous--though all three of them were SOLDIER candidates, they all knew that Ruggard was the most likely to make it in. Being so talented, he had had the most training in everything, from simple medicine to complex attack maneuvers, thanks to his own mentor, and he was the one acting as medic for the squad during the mission. He squatted down beside them, took one look at Cloud, pulled away the helmet.

"James," Ruggard muttered, "tell Zack what's up."

"Sure thing, koi," Clemson said, and dashed off into the underbrush.

Cloud stared at Ruggard with some fright as his friend unslung his pack, rummaged through it. "Ruggard--"

"Just lie back down for me, all right?" Ruggard said, taking Cloud's pulse before pulling out a thermometer. "Best to figure out if it's a bug or a bite or what. If we all get this sick, we're toast. So weird, though--you were fine just earlier today, weren't you?"

Cloud swallowed. "I... threw up, once, but I thought--when I get nervous--"

Ruggard nodded, and kept going. Finally, he pulled out a bottle, rolled out a few pills into his palm, and handed them to Cloud. He found Cloud's canteen, uncorked it for him, and held it out as well. "Go ahead. It oughta help fight the fever."

"Oi, Tom, Cloud--" Zack skid to a crouching halt right beside them, before Cloud could even swallow the pills. "What's going on, Tom?"

Ruggard shook his head. "I think just a bad fever. What he's got there oughta help fight it, but--in action?"

Cloud shook his head. "But I have to--"

Zack looked at Cloud with the kind of no-nonsense stare that reminded him that his friend was also his superior. "You don't have to do anything, if I say so. You did plenty yesterday--hell, it was probably slogging through all that rain that did it, not to mention that skirmish with that monster... Shit. Well, you lie down. The bastards are staying pretty quiet, and I'll be up all night anyway. Ruggard?"

"Sir."

"Stay here with Strife, if you can, keep an eye out for any other symptoms, and alert me immediately if it's something contagious. If it is just a fever, we can deal, and..." Zack looked down at Cloud, smiled, ran a hand through the wild blond strands. "You might manage to get some of that action in after all. But only if you're feeling better, so get some sleep."

"Sir--" Ruggard stopped himself, looked down at Cloud, stood up and pulled Zack to the side. Cloud didn't attempt to listen in, but Zack grunted, looked at him with more worry--and, yes, a realization. Whatever it was Ruggard suggested, Zack agreed.

"Zack--sir--"

"Rest, and that's an order," Zack said, nodding. "Ruggard will be here with you, and like hell I'm going to let this keep going while you're--" A burst of gunfire, and one of the other men on guard duty shouted. Zack cursed, dashed into the forest, away from their small camp. Ruggard came back to Cloud's side, preparing his machine gun, and putting Cloud's within his reach, just in case. He murmured that Cloud be quiet, Cloud be still, try to sleep, but Cloud had a hard time just following orders as he heard the battle break out. The small group of rebels had been causing more misery for the Shinra, so they had been sent out to deal with it--and for how long had they been at this, now? A week? And no reinforcements. Though they hadn't lost anyone yet, they weren't at any great advantage, either.

Cloud shuddered, curled up on his side and listened. Ruggard knelt motionless beside him, attentive, and Cloud wasn't sure how much time passed, or when Ruggard shifted or got up to doublecheck the area surrounding the camp.

He started dreaming, or he thought he was, even though he thought he was still awake. Shapes constantly moving even when everything was perfectly still, the sounds of the battle washing away into white noise, while he thought he heard snatches of his mother talking, humming... and finally, when he started to close his eyes, he thought he saw something coming out of the forest--

Then a gun went off, and Ruggard fell onto his side. Cloud jolted up, looking down to see Ruggard struggling to pick himself up, the wound in his side--and then he grabbed his machine gun and stood up. He wasn't even thinking, he just raised his gun and fired. There was a scream, and more onrushing sounds, but Cloud only stared at the body that fell down in front of him. It was a boy, no older than he was, he was sure--and Ruggard--

He didn't know what happened next. His eyes began to burn and he almost thought he could see green fireflies rising from the body of the boy he had shot--and then there was a rushing scream, roaring up like a tide of sound from somewhere below him, and--

He fell beside Ruggard, unconscious.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

He woke up to find himself in a white place. He felt an odd sense of deja vu, but the room wasn't one he could remember having seen before. The light was bright but his eyes did, eventually, come into focus, enough so he could make out things. Thick blinds hung in the way of the windows, the flourescent lighting overhead was glaring, and there was an uncomfortable metal chair beside his bed, a nightstand on one side and an awkward machine on the other, one he seemed to be connected to. An IV drip stood beside the bed, and he pointedly avoided looking at the tube into his arm. An oxygen mask pumped clean air straight to his nose and mouth--it tasted, smelled, like chemical cleanness.

A sound from beside the machine, a human grunt, and he turned his head, looked as a familiar man in a white labcoat straightened, clipboard and pen in his hands. His dark eyes alighted on Cloud and a small, sneering grin twisted the thin lips.

"You are awake. Imagine. Only a few days under?"

Cloud blinked at him, and then his eyes widened as recognition dawned. It was the professor, the one that Sephiroth hated.

Hojo's grin twisted further, and he set the clipboard and pen aside, clasping his hands behind his back instead and peering down at Cloud. Cloud turned his head to look the other way, hoped his body wasn't shaking like he thought it was.

"Interesting." The professor didn't have to say much--for some reason, the way he spoke that one word said it all. "And amusing. To think that I'd be the one taking caring of you. He must be beside himself with all kinds of imbecilic human feelings."

"Only one." The voice came from the door, and Cloud shifted, saw the black smear in his now-wet vision like a source of comfort in this hurtful white room, but he knew better than to acknowledge the other man's entrance with more. And his body hurt too much to attempt anything other than a nod; he refrained from doing even that.

Hojo looked up at the Commander of SOLDIER, grin gone, replaced by the kind of impatient boredom that Cloud remembered from the truck, months ago. "I haven't had time yet to send word that he was awake."

"I was only coming by to check in on Strife." Sephiroth crossed the room in a few long strides, but kept the bed between himself and the professor. "Mako burn is not a condition we take lightly in my organization."

"Unfortunate that he was the only one who was exposed," Hojo muttered. Sephiroth's glove creaked, and Cloud could make out the older man's right hand, clenched. "Donovan's report mentioned an early battle with a monster in the same area--this boy must have stumbled into a fountain without even realizing it."

"A great find for the company, I'm sure," Sephiroth said.

"Of course," Hojo said, taking his clipboard and pen in hand again. "We'd have to look after him just for the service he's provided the company, finding one of those. Otherwise, he'd be more worthy dead than alive."

"You've witnessed enough men dying and dead from Mako exposure, I think. One more won't tell you anything that you don't already know."

"Is that so...?" Hojo said, writing down something in his notes. He checked the machine beside the bed one more time, nodded and scribbled, then put his pen back inside his coat pocket. Without another word, he stepped out, and Sephiroth only followed so far to close the door after the professor. He paused, listened, returned to the side of Cloud's bed to find the trooper staring up at him, eyes wide.

"Zack...?"

"He's on duty right now."

"Rug...?"

"Ruggard's fine." Sephiroth paused again, turned off the overhead light. The room went into instant darkness, until the Commander turned on the lamp on the nightstand. Cloud sank further back onto his pillow, realizing he had been tense since he had first started awake. He shut his eyes, felt the lips against his temple, listened only to the whispered words. "You were out for a few days, on the verge of a coma."

"Com..." Cloud forced his eyes open as Sephiroth pulled away, gloved hand sliding along his face, stopping at the oxygen mask. "You, Zack... were here?"

"Yes. It's amazing you lasted for as long as you did before the exposure took you down. Are you still seeing things?"

He shook his head. "Is it always like... like this?"

"No. Usually it's much worse. You were very fortunate." The hand began to stroke his hair. "I am very fortunate."

"Sephiroth--" His voice choked up but he swallowed, glanced down toward the needle and tube taped to his arm. "How long--I don't want--"

"Now you're awake, you'll have to remain in observation for a day here," Sephiroth murmured. "It's procedure. They will need to keep an eye on you, make sure you're not going to suffer a relapse. These first twenty-four hours are critical. After that, you'll be sent home, and will be allowed a few more days off duty for recovery." The older man's brow drew together, and after a short moment, he said, "The mission wasn't supposed to last for so long, and your birthday..."

Cloud blinked. "What day is it?"

"August fifteenth."

"I'm... I'm fifteen now."

Sephiroth nodded. "We'll celebrate when you're better." A small smile, then, and Cloud smiled back when another hand ghosted along his arm, clasped his own, fingers far stronger and more certain than his own. "And we will celebrate later." He straightened, glared at the door. "He's coming back."

"Tell Zack, for me?"

"Of course. I'll see him when he gives me his report tonight, and inform him then. He'll probably come straight here." A smile of a different sort, amusement. "If you're asleep, though, he'll let you rest. It might be best to let him rest, as well. He's been very worried about you."

They said nothing else, but Sephiroth seemed reluctant to leave him. Cloud knew some of it had to be because of the man's own desires, but he knew the other part of it as well; Sephiroth didn't want to leave him alone with Hojo. He wished he didn't have to be left with the professor, either, but there was nothing either of them could do, and they both knew that. So it came down to this, shared silence, before Sephiroth went to the door, opened it, found Hojo with his hand outreached for the doorknob. They traded short words, though they were so quiet Cloud couldn't make them out. He turned his head away from the lamplight, shut his eyes and prayed to sleep before Hojo touched him.

***

Zack jokingly carried Cloud piggy-back around the apartment while several of the members of their squad laughed and cheered. The apartment was a mess of pizza and cake and, on the kitchen counter, messily shoveled-out bowls of ice cream, as well as streamers and soda cans and, later on, glasses of drinks, imported alcohol mostly. Sephiroth was even there, though he stayed out of the direct excitement, seemed more amused to watch the men partying. When he was threatened with whipped cream if he didn't lighten up, there was a moment he had Zack pinned on the floor and the threatening can of whipped cream at hand.

Cloud discovered Sephiroth had a secret weakness for ice cream. It was a mental note loved and stored for future reference, but at the time he realized it, James Clemson was shoving a glass of some mixed beverage in his face, and he couldn't exactly say no. That can of whipped cream was dangerous.

Eventually the others started to stumble out, holding onto--and occasionally groping--one another for support. Zack had to pull James and Tom apart from making out on the couch before sending them home, and as they were the last to leave, he closed the door, sighed, grinned, and plucked a blue streamer from his hair.

The three of them sprawled out on the couch, Sephiroth with Cloud sitting sideways on his lap. Zack joined them by taking up the rest of the couch, settling his head on Cloud's lap, and grinned up at his friends. None of them were exactly sober, though with Sephiroth it was harder to tell than the others, and Cloud felt a pleasant buzz in his system, lightened and blurry and inexplicably happy.

That was before Zack mixed another drink for just the three of them, something he called the Toxic Venus.

The next morning, Cloud wasn't entirely certain what happened after that point, only that there had been some kissing. He was on his bed, in a notable state of undress, though Zack seemed, more or less, fully clothed on his bed. Sephiroth was nowhere to be seen, but that didn't surprise Cloud--he was a little sad, but he understood. That, and Sephiroth had promised that they'd celebrate on their own later.

Then the headache hit, and it took the rest of the morning before he could get out of bed without the room spinning. Zack with his Soldier metabolism didn't take quite so long, but thankfully held off teasing Cloud about his liquor intake--instead, he helped Cloud to the bathroom a few times, and made a "morning after" cure-all drink for him. Cloud never asked what was in it, but it seemed to do the trick.

And at least, staying in bed meant that he missed out on most of the apartment cleaning that needed to be done. Zack did call him out to point out the new stain they had acquired on the ceiling. They couldn't remember or figure out what it was or how it had gotten there. Zack declared it gave the apartment more character, and sat Cloud on the couch, where Cloud found his package from his mother waiting for him.

Inside was a blue, hand-knit sweater, a tin of her chocolate chip cookies, and a little bit of extra money she said she had managed to make when a peddler came through town. Her letter was a little shorter than usual but he didn't care. It was still her writing. It was still home.

Cloud remembered, yet again, that Zack was a very good hugger, especially when crying for simple, silly reasons--even if Zack assured him, and reassured him, that his reasons weren't simple or silly.

They had managed to wrangle that day and the next off, so with Cloud's leave Zack went out to spend some sorely needed time with his girl. Cloud watched him go, hugging the sweater even though he wouldn't need to wear it for several more months, and then waited. When he got the phone call late that day, he pulled on a jacket, grabbed the tin of his mother's cookies, and took the back route to Sephiroth's suite.

***

Watching Sephiroth eat one of the cookies had to have been one of the best presents Cloud could have gotten for his birthday, as Sephiroth seemed surprised that Cloud offered them to him, even more surprised when Cloud insisted. The first bite had been small, curious. The second, more certain. The third ended with a kiss. It was odd to taste chocolate on the other man's lips, but Cloud decided he didn't mind. Kissing Sephiroth at all had never been unpleasant.

There were candles. The other man hadn't gone to extravagance for their private celebration, but Cloud knew he appreciated aesthetics, far more than others might believe. The entire suite was dark, with no lights on except for in the kitchen and in the bathroom. The rest of the suite was lit by the candles, enough to let out an ambient glow, but never enough to fully illumine anything. The only exception was the living area, where they were sitting to enjoy themselves first. There were the cookies, and there was a special tea Sephiroth said he ordered from Wutai, a bitterness that worked well with the chocolate in the cookies.

Then Sephiroth completely surprised him, telling him to close his eyes. An object was pressed into Cloud's hands, and when he opened his eyes he saw his fingers curled carefully around the sheath and hilt of a dagger. He recognized the type of binding and gildwork when he drew the blade easily enough, saw the runes etched along the bloodchannel and knew precisely where the dagger had come from. He looked up at Sephiroth with wide eyes, watched the turn of the older man's lips.

"It suits you," was all he said, and kissed him.

***

Sephiroth appreciated aesthetics. Cloud knew he liked the way colors looked against Cloud's pale features. The black kimono that Cloud now knew and remembered so well was his, now, and when he emerged from the shower, steaming and smelling faintly of the salts Sephiroth had provided, his Commander and lover took a moment before going in himself, just to look at him, hand tracing his features, finger skimming the ridge of his collar bone. Then the other man stepped in, and Cloud lay on the bed, waiting as he always did, eyes watching the set of three candles on the nightstand, closest to the windows. All the candles in the rest of the suite had been extinguished.

It wasn't just the kimono, however, that Sephiroth gave Cloud to wear during his visits, as far apart as they often were. There was another one, with a thicker weave of smoky grey silk and silver thread embroidery, a trim of wind and clouds that followed along the left neckline down the hem. Then there were the other things, the black scarf from that one night Sephiroth had used to bind Cloud's sight as well as his hands, the red thread from that other night, the black leather of one of Sephiroth's belts.

He shuddered just from the memory, and in anticipation. He turned his head when the light from the bathroom went out, draping everything in darkness and candlelight, smiled when he saw the gleam of the jade in the dark, resting on him.

"Sephiroth..." It wasn't much, to pull one knee up, just enough to let the fold of the kimono come open, reveal enough of his bare leg. "Please?"

"You ask so nicely," Sephiroth said, and there was a smile on his face as he joined him, but he shook his head. "I want to do it differently tonight."

"Differently?"

"Of course. After all, a birthday celebration only happens once a year."

When he touched Cloud lightly with his fingertips, Cloud shuddered, nodded, murmured something in agreement.

***

On the way back to the apartment the next day, Cloud decided taking the back route was probably the safest. It was a dark morning; Midgar was normally dark, but the clouds overhead were darker than usual. Even so early in the day, it smelled of waiting rain. Sephiroth had been reluctant to let him go, but they both knew Cloud couldn't stay much longer, and Sephiroth murmured about his promise to take Cloud to the hot springs. Cloud only kissed the warrior's knuckles, heard a low growl of frustration and desire, and didn't manage to leave for another ten minutes. Then it was out into the weather, and on the way home.

He turned a corner, away from the complex and down a side street, when a shadow detached from the wall. Cloud stopped, eyes moving instantly from the figure to the rest of the side street, glancing behind him, already checking for possible escape routes. Unfortunately, there was only back the way he came, and if this was--

And it was a Turk, the one with the red hair, the one Zack called his sometimes-friend. The Turk grinned, dropped a cigarette into a drain on the side of the street.

"Oi. So tell me, how come Zack doesn't know about this?"

Cloud did not let his shoulders hunch. He only stared back at those eyes. "Know about what?"

"Cute. Very cute." Reno slouched closer, though there was nothing lazy in him--just the appearance of laziness. "This has nothing to do with how you made that big cut of the first real exams, did it?"

"I did that on my own," Cloud said, telling himself not to step back, not to back down. "Zack helped me--but I made it on my own."

"Maybe. You know, it's not like I actually care who he sleeps with. Or what, for that matter." He stood beside Cloud, scratched his chin while looking down and sideways at the trooper. "But other people do. Still, it's not like he's demanded anything special--hell, if anything else, he seems more willing to do whatever the hell the brass asks of him for once. But that don't mean a shit if he keeps skipping appointments with the doc. You know the one."

Cloud looked straight ahead. "I don't know what you mean."

A hand snatched him by the arm, and the next thing he knew he had troubles breathing, his back against a wall and the bar of the Turk's nightstick pressing against his throat. When the white spots of light cleared up he could see Reno glaring at him, could feel the other hand hard against his shoulder.

"Drop that innocent bullshit, kid. Fuck all if I care what he's done to you, with you, whether you like it or not--do you think I give a shit if he's fucked you? If Zack's fucked you?" His fingers tightened their hold on his shoulder, nails closing down painfully, until a gasp of pain escaped. "Listen. Whatever the hell's going on between you, he's not seen the good doc since you got that burn. Damned if the doc's gonna tell us what the hell happened--but damned if that concerns me either. What matters is that those appointments are kept. And you're gonna help whether you like it or not, got it?"

Cloud grit his teeth, opened his own eyes to glare back. "Like hell--"

Reno pulled him from the wall, jerked him straight off and slammed the nightstick hard against Cloud's back. Cloud didn't have the time or even the reflexes to stop the Turk--only fell hard to the street when the stick struck him. Before he could push himself up Reno kicked him hard on his side, shoved him onto his back, propped his foot against Cloud's neck.

"Shit, kid. I wanted to play nice. I really did. It's your own goddamned fault."

Cloud coughed, hands scrabbling at the leg of the foot on his throat, ineffectual. Reno only stared down at him, then reached into an inside pocket of his blazer, pulled out a PHS unit.

"Yeah, it's me. Kid doesn't want to cooperate. He's off duty for a few days, not like anybody's gonna care if he doesn't show up around the campus for a bit. Want I should--boss?" Something in Reno's tone changed, somehow became more respectful, though his words were the same. "Yeah. Sure thing, boss, right to you. Drugs? Might be nice. Truck oughta be better. No need to drag his scrawny ass in plain sight, someone might see. Sides, seems he oughta be pretty damned familiar with the inside of one of those trucks. Right. Yessir."

The phone clicked closed, and Reno returned it to its pocket, drew out a small package and smiled down at him.

"Ever hear of those date rape drugs, kiddo?" he asked sweetly. "Sure you have. Zack must've warned you, right?" Seeing Cloud's eyes widen, he nodded. "Oh yeah. You've got a choice. Be a good boy and behave, or..." Reno dangled the bag over him, rattling the pills inside. "Or not. You're not gonna cooperate by sweet talking the big guy into doing as he's told, then we're gonna have to get our uses outta you some other way. Your fault, kid. Your own motherfuckin fault."

***

He recognized the truck even as he was pulled up into and shoved down onto its bed, recalling clearly the stain in the front right corner, the nicks along the floor where he had nearly lost a nail, clawing. Knowing that the Turks knew, and knowing that was why they had picked out this one out of any other they could have gotten, just made him angrier, more frustrated, and he picked himself up and charged back at them before the tall bald one could close the truck doors. Reno still stood outside and actually looked surprised to see Cloud charging, but the other turned, blocked his first jab and then punched him in the gut.

He staggered before falling over. He was pulled onto his back and had two pills forced into his mouth, along with some colorless, tasteless liquid that burned slightly, made him swallow. He felt nauseated immediately, tried to sit up to force himself to puke, but the Turk forced him down and he knew better than to try throwing up laying down like that; drowning in his own vomit would be worse than whatever they had in mind for him.

Reno said something to the Turk, called him Rude. The big man kept looking at Cloud from behind his shades, nodded. Cloud stopped struggling, but Rude didn't let him go for several minutes, even after the truck's back had been closed up and it had lurched into motion. By that time, the drugs had settled into his system.

He curled onto his side, whimpered, shut his eyes. The motion of the truck faded. Sounds became muffled, muddled. All he felt he could really feel, hear, was the thudding of his heartbeat, the pulse of blood in his veins. It was a lot like drowning, he thought, and that was the last lucid thought he would have for several hours.

***

He woke up coughing. Struggling, he wondered why he couldn't push himself up, why he couldn't wipe his eyes. It took him a moment to realize his hands were bound behind his back. It took him even longer before the realization that he was stark naked to settle. Once it did, he came wide awake with a jolt, managed to sit up regardless of the bound state of his wrists, and twisted his head around, taking in what must have been one of the Turks' private cells.

There wasn't much to say, other than it was small, and bare, and cold. The only light came from beyond the cell's door, through the window that, even if he hadn't felt aching, he could only see out of if he had stood up on his toes. And he was curled up in the corner made by the wall and the cot he found himself on--a straight wooden board with only a little bit of padding, a little scrap of blanket. There was a bad taste in his mouth, and he tried desperately to work a little more moisture. Gods, his body felt so stretched, so worn out--

A shadow crossed over the light. The door opened, and the other Turk from that other truck ride, so long ago--the one with the long black hair, the dark, almost Wutanese eyes--stepped in, glass of water in hand.

"We've contacted the Commander concerning your disappearance. He'll be here shortly. Until that time, your cooperation would be appreciated." He came forward, offered the glass of water. Cloud stared at it warily. "There are no drugs," the man said. "It's not our intent to cause permanent injury."

He didn't want to accept, but he was so dry he knew he didn't have a choice. The Turk tipped the glass to his lips, let him drink it at his own pace, the entire glass. Then he started for the doorway, stopped and turned.

"Do you remember anything of the past fourteen hours?" he asked. Cloud only stared, so the man nodded, and left.

Cloud didn't know how long he was left there, alone, forcing down the occasional shiver. Shifting about did little to ease his discomfort, and he wondered what must have happened while he was awake--drugged, but awake--that had ended with him curled up in the corner. Granted, he hoped he would have been defensive, would have done anything to protect himself--but what had happened? He tried desperately to remember.

There was a laugh from the other side. He froze.

The door opened again, let in someone whose pristine white clothes stood in sharp contrast to the rest of his surroundings. He kept his eyes lowered, unable to look the Vice President of the company in the face.

"Not hopping to your feet to salute me, Strife?" Rufus asked.

Cloud turned his face away; he felt sick to his stomach.

"I'm curious to know what you think happened, but at the same time, I don't want to push you about it. Those drugs are said to work all kinds of horrors." A pause, and then. "Ah, there you are. I'm sorry it came down to this. One would think they could have informed me of the need to reinforce the importance of your little visits with the good professor. They should have just had me talk to you. I could have made you seen reason, couldn't I?"

"Your father doesn't want to admit that you have any kind of influence over his most powerful weapon." The answering voice struck Cloud like a blow across his back. He curled up more tightly, fought the nausea, waited for the Commander's cold anger. He had never seen Sephiroth truly angry. He had seen him annoyed, angered--but not like this. "And I am. I know what I'm good for." The voice lowered, a hiss. "Where are your bodyguards, Rufus?"

"I don't need them," and the maddening thing about the Shinra's reply was the grin Cloud could hear there, beyond his sight. "If I do, they're right there. They'll come when I call. They're good dogs. But good dogs aren't the best weapons, are they? We need something more feral for that."

The response was a growl. Cloud shook when he felt the gloved hand touch his back, waiting to feel that anger directed at him. Instead, his jacket was draped over his shoulders. "I'm taking him back."

"Only if you resume your appointments. That's the deal. Otherwise, he gets handed over to Hojo."

There was no audible answer. At some point someone else joined them in the room. Some shuffling, and his jacket was raised so a key could unlock the cuffs at his wrists. Then the room was empty, though the door stood wide open, and Cloud's belongings lay in a pile at the foot of the cot. He painfully went about getting dressed, double-checking to make certain that everything he had had with him when he left Sephiroth's suite was there. He nearly cried to see that the Nibel dagger was still intact, untouched and unharmed.

Once ready, he shuffled to the door. A young woman with blond hair and brown eyes glanced up at him from her place behind a desk, and then looked to the front of the room. Reno stood there. There was no sign of anyone else.

"Ready?" Reno said. Cloud only nodded.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

Zack answered the door, his anxiety plain on his face. He ushered Cloud inside and actually stepped out into the hallway, glaring both up and down, as if he could smell the scent of Turk and knew that Reno was lurking somewhere nearby. Unable to see anyone, however, the Soldier closed the door, locked it, and then turned to see Cloud bent over the small table to the side of the door, the dagger and the small tin lying there, his face broken out in cold sweat. Zack cursed, picked him up and ran with him to the bathroom, held him up while he wretched into the toilet.

He took a shower and spent the rest of the day in bed, unable to feel anything but sick. Zack did what he could to ease some food into him, soup mostly, and whenever the glass of water on the nightstand became empty, Zack made sure to fill it up again. Occasionally he got down beside the bed and rested his head on his arms on the edge of the mattress. They spoke in low voices, about nothing of any consequence at all, and it was good. It was good because during those times he didn't have to think, and he didn't try to remember.

"Zack?" Cloud interrupted his friend, once, and Zack blinked at him, surprised.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you." And it was quiet, and he worried maybe Zack wouldn't know what he meant, whether it was everything or just talking to him about nothing or just--just being Zack. But Zack grinned, and ruffled his hair.

"Hey. We're friends, right?"

Before he could go any further, there came a knock from outside. Zack wondered aloud who it could be, gave Cloud's shoulder a comforting squeeze before leaving the bedroom. Cloud stayed curled up on the bed and closed his eyes, mind blessedly blank. The door opened. Zack's voice was quiet, and so was the one that answered. Cloud heard that voice and sat straight up, eyes widening, and unable to move when he saw Sephiroth come to the doorway to the bedroom, Zack right behind him.

"Sephiroth--" He wasn't sure what wanted to come out, then, a confession, an apology, a cry, anything at all. But it wound up he didn't have to say anything at all, because it was Sephiroth who apologized, voice a murmur before the black-clad one was right beside him and holding him. He found his hands clutching the trenchcoat and the silver hair in a white-knuckled grip; he saw Zack standing awkwardly nearby, as if uncertain to come closer or stay uninvolved, detached--but there was relief, there, too, and pain, and something else that he couldn't make out before Zack walked back out of sight.

"Oi. You two both rest, got it?" Zack said it from the doorway, before flicking off the room's light. "Yes, Sephiroth, you too, and don't you dare say you don't need it--you nearly fell over in the door, don't think I didn't notice." And he closed the door.

Silence save for the sounds of their breathing, quiet to Cloud's ears, until he heard, distantly, Zack scrounging around in the cabinets in the kitchen. He was probably going to make them all dinner.

"Gods," and it was Sephiroth who said it, though Cloud was about to breathe it out. He started to lean over and Cloud went with him. They spent a few moments shifting on the mattress, which didn't have that much room, but they did get comfortable as they could, and Sephiroth's hand took to stroking Cloud's hair, over and over again.

"I'm s-sorry," he choked out, and Sephiroth's hand stopped its petting, while his other arm just drew Cloud even closer.

"Don't. I let them take you. Damn it... There's nothing either of us could have done." A pause, and he lowered his voice. "Zack wondered why they didn't take him. He knows, now. You realize that."

"I know," Cloud whispered. "I... He's all right?"

"I don't know," and Sephiroth spoke it honestly, "but I think he's all right with it. For now. He won't say anything until this has blown over, in any case."

He shuddered, closed his eyes and turned his face against the other man's chest. "Blown over?"

"You're right. But I'm not stopping. Especially not now." There was ferocity and anger, but it was not directed at him. "I'm not going to let those bastards think they can stop--I won't--" He cut himself off, and Cloud only nodded. His exhaustion caught up with him fully, and Sephiroth said nothing else.

They woke when Zack came back into the room, letting them know he had fixed a little something--not much, but damned if he was going to let them starve. It was his staple, spaghetti and meatballs, and Cloud was thankful for the food, and Zack managed to talk about small, funny things, about James and Tom and the rest of the squad but mostly James, who was the biggest troublemaker. They talked, and he even worked a laugh or so out of them, before Sephiroth said he was much better and would make it back to his suite without "falling over", as Zack had put it.

It was after Sephiroth left that the awkwardness returned, and Cloud found himself with Zack in the living room, unable to say anything. Then Zack sighed, and all his weariness came to plain sight, and he said, "Fuck it."

They each got ready for bed and went to bed without saying anything else the rest of the night. Cloud cried himself to sleep, and prayed desperately that Zack wouldn't notice.

***

The silence between them wouldn't last forever, but it lasted longer than Cloud thought it would. He kept trying, awkwardly, to speak--Zack attempted sometimes to talk back, to hold his gaze or attention, but either one of them would fail, look away, end the conversation with a soft affirmative or negative, and then they'd go about their own ways. It made living in the apartment together maddening, and Zack seemed to be gone more than usual. It wasn't out of retaliation, Cloud was sure, but it still hurt, and he started waiting around Sephiroth's office more than usual, particularly when the Commander had just returned from a mission--whether it was real or one of his resumed appointments with the professor--and the older man seemed to have no problem taking Cloud back to the suite.

But Sephiroth was worried about their friend as well. He consistently asked Cloud about him, muttering either that Zack was acting an idiot--it was the kind of frustration that meant friendship, Cloud was sure--or that perhaps sending all three of them on a mission together ought to break down the communication barrier. Cloud appeased him with a kiss, usually, and they both sat in quiet, thinking, worrying, or perhaps blessedly doing neither.

One day, Cloud came home from the suite and Zack was in the kitchen, singing loudly along with the radio. There were all kinds of strange ingredients lying around the kitchen, and a bottle of beer stood open beside the oven, where Zack happened to be stirring a pot. Cloud ventured closer, sniffing the air cautiously, then deciding that whatever it was, it at least smelled good. Zack was well known for his ability to make things from scratch--and sometimes it bombed spectacularly. This smelled safe, though.

He set his duffel down beside the entrance to the kitchen, padded in. Zack was still singing along and was shaking a canister of herbs over the pot, but seemed to remain oblivious. Cloud waited for him to put the canister down before coming up behind him and hugging him. Zack stilled instantly, voice dying mid-syllable, and Cloud was glad he couldn't see his friend's face, as horrible a thought as it was.

"Missed you," he choked out, cheek and mouth against the cotton cloth of Zack's t-shirt, and he realized as he said it that it was true. He and Zack had seen each other, had lived still in the same apartment, but they hadn't actually been there. That Zack, the laughing, dancing, singing, prankster Zack--that Zack had been gone.

A warm hand closed over one of his own. The radio was forgotten, though it still played.

"Oi. Shouldn't do a thing like that. SOLDIER reflexes. Might've gone ballistic on you."

"You didn't, though."

Zack grunted, but his hand tightened its hold, almost to the point of pain. Cloud ignored the discomfort, squeezed back as hard as he could, until Zack finally said, "Hey... can't let too much salt get in, it'll ruin the taste..."

Cloud pulled away, found his friend's eyes as wet as his voice had been. He only stood aside, waited as Zack covered the pot and left it to simmer, turned and looked at him at last. He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes.

"What're we gonna do, kiddo? Huh?" Zack gestured, looking away, looking disgusted. "I don't know what to say, what to think. Hell. Just. You two couldn't have... Gods, how long has it been? When did--you're fifteen, Cloud, I was damned certain that maybe--but not that much--kissing, maybe, you know? And even that bothered the hell outta me."

Cloud dropped his gaze, swallowed. "Not been fifteen long."

He could feel Zack's gaze hard on him, taking Cloud's words as truth, not even questioning. The next few words were nothing but curses, none too soft or gentle. Cloud let them run their course, hoping he never winced.

"Yeah."

"Fourteen. Gods. You--he didn't--"

Cloud shook his head. "I wanted it. And he never. I mean. And it's not like--not like he ever did the things the others do." He breathed another shaky breath, ran a hand through his hair, clenched it at the memory. "He never. Not like that."

"Okay, okay," Zack said, coming closer, putting his hands on Cloud's shoulders. "Okay, I'll take your word for that. Don't go digging up things you'd rather not have dug in the first place."

Cloud shook his head, looked up. "It's not--and we didn't--I didn't think you'd want us to, or, maybe something bad would happen, or..." He shrugged, dropped his gaze again. "You had... your girl, Zack. And he and I... we..."

"Hell, I'm just--gods, I shouldn't have had to find out that way. You know that? You just up and disappeared, and I find out why--and it's not just because he was hiding those appointments from me in the first place--I'll forgive him, but gods help me if I don't punch him first, the bastard--but you were both hiding from me. I'm your friend, Cloud. I thought you'd come to me, first, I thought--"

"Zack--" And here his voice did that embarrassing, breaking thing. "Zack, you've had--you're perfect, Zack. Everything about you. It's just. How the hell was I ever supposed to--I didn't even know if it was real for me, let alone--it just--it just--" He stopped, gave up, shoulders slumping. "I just wanted... to be happy. Like you. I didn't want--he didn't want--we--not to hurt you, Zack. Never. Never hurt--"

Zack whispered his name, came closer again, but didn't quite go to hug him, seemed to hesitate. Cloud closed the rest of the distance, held him, and his tears were hot and painful, stinging.

"I'm sorry."

"Gods help us, I know. I know..."

***

When the door to Sephiroth's suite opened, Cloud never even saw Zack pull the punch. He just heard the crack, stared in shock and amazement as Sephiroth straightened from the blow, raising one hand to feel his cheek.

"That's for hiding that those appointments were still going on," Zack muttered, and Sephiroth only nodded, stepped back. It wasn't until they were all in the suite and the Commander had closed the door that Zack was tackled from behind, and Cloud stared in further disbelief. It ended with Sephiroth having pinned Zack to the floor, but his grin was victorious, and Zack stuck his tongue out at Cloud, too red in the face to say anything but playful enough to reveal that it hadn't, in fact, been anything that serious.

In Cloud's head, it reminded him of a catfight he had seen in the alley between his mother's house and Tifa's house, two tom cats who had yowled and fought and fussed to determine who was the better. The next day, he caught them grooming side by side, completely at ease.

"You there, Cloud?" Zack said, propping his chin up on his hands, as Sephiroth hadn't gotten up off his back yet.

"Er, um, yeah," Cloud mumbled, then sat cross-legged beside the two of them. "So?"

"So," Sephiroth repeated, more certainly, and looked down at Zack.

"Not to say being lonely sucks or anything like that," Zack drawled, "but I--hell, I won't just deal with it, I'll be happy. Just--gods, you two never speak that much normally--you've gotta talk to me sometimes, okay?"

Cloud nodded. "Okay. I will."

"Not just you." Zack turned his head as well as he could, and pointed. "You, too, big fella."

"Hmm." Sephiroth finally stood up, reached down to help Cloud to his feet, and then held his hand out for Zack. "All right."

"Good," Zack said, took Sephiroth's hand, sprung up to his feet. "Cause I'm hungry. Let's go get some grub."

***

Next spring, Cloud stood outside the door to one of the hangers, dressed in uniform, though he had gone off duty three hours ago. He checked his watch, looked down at his boots, hummed when there was no one else nearby.

The door came open; he stood up straight and saluted automatically, though it took his brain a few moments to catch up with what his eyes saw. It wasn't who he expected, and he was thankful for his ability to look indirectly at someone without offending them by not looking at them--and in this case--

Rufus Shinra had already taken a few steps up the hallway, swiping one hand through his hair, his own eyes lowered, when he happened to glance up and notice just who it was standing across the hall. He stopped; the two Turks accompanying him stopped as well.

"At ease," Rufus said distractedly. Cloud managed not to curse aloud, and kept his gaze straight ahead even as he tried very hard to do nothing, just lean back against the wall as he had been. This would have been fine, if Rufus hadn't stepped directly into his view. Cloud knew better than to look away. Rufus grinned, then, sliding one hand into a coat pocket. "It is you. The Commander trains his pets well, doesn't he? They even wait for him adoringly by the door when he's returning home."

Cloud said nothing.

"You do know what he was doing this time, don't you?" Rufus asked, and when Cloud still said nothing, he leaned closer. "Escorting me, of course. In Wutai. No safer escort than the very man who forced an entire nation to its knees."

"Sir," said the tall Turk with the long black hair, "it's almost time for the executive dinner."

Rufus nodded, but did not lean back, remained maddeningly close. "We'll see how long you last as his sheath, Strife. But he's the kind of sword so sharp it shreds everything apart, especially the restraint that keeps it. It will be interesting," and his fingers brushed Cloud's cheek as he finally pulled away, "to see just how long this lasts, and what he will do to you when he no longer has any use for you."

"Your next military inspection doesn't occur for another month, Vice President," said a cold voice from behind. "I'd prefer it if you didn't harrass my SOLDIER candidates until then."

"Commander," Rufus said, turning as Sephiroth finally appeared at the hanger door, an unknown First Class beside him with what must have been their supplies. With a murmured command from Sephiroth and the Soldier's own salute, he turned and left, but even Cloud caught the flash of Mako eyes glancing at him from under the visor as the First Class passed. He didn't have the presence of mind to wonder, however, not with Sephiroth and Rufus standing right in front of him.

"You should be more kind to your candidates," the Vice President continued, "and stop giving me the opportunity to harrass them."

"I'm sure the President would welcome the idea of sending you to more troublesome areas that require your expertise in direction and militant control on a more regular basis," Sephiroth said. "Without so much of an escort, of course. I hear there's a particularly troublesome Mako investigation up north that could use your leadership. I could always make a suggestion."

Rufus said nothing; his back faced Cloud, so he couldn't see the man's face, but he could hear his voice, tight, chilling, and angry. "You wouldn't dare."

"Then you'd best hope my sheath holds," Sephiroth said, and the hint of a smirk crossed his features. Rufus muttered something and then left with the Turks right behind him, and as soon as they had turned down a corner, Cloud looked up to see Sephiroth looking at him, eyes heavy-lidded and expression smug. "Shall we go?"

Cloud nodded, forced his own relief and smile down. "Yes, sir."

He fell into step behind the Commander, keeping up the appearance that he was, momentarily, only on office duty, playing a kind of secretary for the Shinra's Great Sephiroth. It was a role he had in fact taken on several times since fall, but never regularly, and never at the expense of opportunity to go with Zack and squad zeta on missions. Sephiroth had said, occasionally, that youth in itself wasn't a weakness--inexperience was weakness. Once he had said it when Zack--playfully--brought up Cloud's age in regards to a recent "private display of affection" on his couch, and Sephiroth had shot right back with his own amused tone of voice. Cloud had heard it again once after he had just come back from a mission, a particularly trying one where all of the other troopers had been older than him, and he had had to deal with inappropriate commentary. When Sephiroth had said it then, it was much more seriously, with the jade green locking onto his own gaze and refusing to let him just drop it, until Sephiroth was certain Cloud understood his meaning.

"The verbal instruction and flimsy workbooks they give out in your classes are nothing to real experience," Sephiroth had murmured. At his insistence, Cloud had replaced a few hours of academic studying to working with Zack in the training gym, and it had helped. Amazingly enough, his academic scores didn't suffer so greatly, but his ranking among the other candidates began to rise. He regained hope that he might make it as a Soldier after all.

They reached the transportation offices, where the First Class from before now stood, bag of supplies beside him, as well as another familiar duffel. Cloud grinned when he noticed a post-it stuck to the top with a note left in Zack's nearly illegible scrawl--something about being safe and not too naughty and come back in one piece. He picked up the other bag of supplies that the First Class offered him, and Sephiroth exchanged short words with the man before he was dismissed. The First Class took off his helmet with a relieved grin, thanked his Commander, grabbed his own duffel and left with the lightness to his own step that said he was off duty for a day or so. Then another officer told Sephiroth that their transport was ready, and Sephiroth looked to Cloud.

"We'll be on our way, then."

***

Traveling into the Midgar Mountains took much less time in a Shinra van, even if it made Cloud sick to his stomach. Sephiroth offered him some kind of medicine that soothed his stomach, so he spent most of the ride asleep. The result was being nudged gently awake in time to see, well into the morning, the clear thin blue sky of green mountains--and the high piled stone wall that protected the hot spring inn. They were met by the inn's proprietess, and escorted inside not only by her but by several of her maids. Officially the inn was not open yet--Sephiroth and Cloud would have the inn to themselves that day, until tomorrow when other regular customers appeared. The proprietess took them back to a private suite, somewhat disconnected from the main building of the inn, save for fenced walkways that made it impossible for other curious guests to see who occupied the private suite, or the hot springs that only those in the private suite could use. Cloud had heard that the private suite was used by very few people in the world; few could afford it, even the richest of Midgar.

They stepped into the simple room of the private suite and Cloud stared, having never seen anything like it, the fresh tatami mats on the floor and the rice-paper walls, the sliding doors and the single futon spread out in a smaller bedroom. The proprietess and maids knew exactly what the Commander's vacation was about, he was embarrassed to realize, but Sephiroth seemed perfectly at ease with the idea.

"Nothing ever leaves here," Sephiroth reassured him, when Cloud noticed the single futon. "No one has ever bought information from them. Not even the Turks." He placed his hands on Cloud's shoulders, pulled him back to the other room. "She said they'll have a lunch ready for us momentarily. Shall we enjoy it outside?"

He opened the sliding door leading to the suite's garden, and Cloud stared. The paths were pale pebbles, bordered on each side by smooth stone slabs, leading to an arrangement of large stones that sat beneath a tree the sort Cloud had never seen before, pale white blossoms clumped in bunches about its branches. Beside the large stones and the tree was a pond, and Cloud hurriedly slipped on the smaller pair of geta right outside the door to hurry to the pond, stare at the lilies drifting on its surface, stare at the fish swimming inside, beautiful silver and red-spotted koi. His weariness from the traveling and the pills was momentarily forgotten; he looked up at Sephiroth and smiled.

Nothing could touch them there. There was nothing to hurt them, to taunt them, to hide from.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

Wandering about all day in a yukata while at the inn was expected, and though it took him some time to get used to it, Cloud decided he liked it. Despite the chill of the mornings and evenings, it was a comfortable garment, and he liked walking about on the geta, in the garden, to the hot springs and back. He heard other people, from time to time, talking, sometimes the maids and sometimes the other guests, but if he was with Sephiroth and the other man heard anyone approaching, he gently squeezed Cloud's hand, Cloud's shoulder, and they waited for the others to pass on the other side of the fence and out of hearing range before they started up again. It didn't bother him, though he wondered--but Sephiroth explained that, even if no one knew Cloud's voice, Sephiroth's would be easily recognized by many people who worked for the Shinra, and the ones who could afford to stay at the hot springs were all highly positioned employees--if not executives--for the company.

The bathroom had no shower, though there was a stool and a sink not far from the bathtub to use for washing hair. The bathtub was huge and meant for soaking, Sephiroth explained; they were to clean themselves off first before getting in. Cloud found it strange but realized that the communal bathrooms in the main Shinra offices and even in some parts of the SOLDIER campus were based off of the same principle, where one showered first and then soaked in the pool-like baths.

Cloud thought they spent a lot of their time at the inn wet, whether in the hot spring or enjoying normal baths--they were never simple affairs, and he didn't mind, came to enjoy the added feeling the water gave to everything from casual caresses to the rest of it, all of it.

But the week did, eventually, pass. When they left, the van prepped and ready in the earliest hours of the morning, before sunrise even, most of the inn's staff turned out to see them go. Sephiroth had taught him a bit of Wutanese by then, and, stuttering, Cloud bowed and thanked them. He was surprised when all of them bowed and thanked them in return, and Sephiroth approached the proprietess, white envelope in hand. She took it with an even lower bow and thank-you; when they got into the van and started to drive off, Cloud could hear a cry of surprise and excitement.

"What was that?" he asked, washing down the pills with a sip of water.

"A tip," Sephiroth said, and started driving. He didn't drive as fast as Zack did, which on the mountain roads Cloud considered to be a blessing, but he was quick to react to anything and efficient.

"A tip?"

"Yes. It would be impolite to give them nothing. I gave them considerably more."

Cloud frowned. "But I wasn't able to give them anything."

"You spoke to them in their own language, which few of their visitors ever do," Sephiroth said. "That in itself was a small thing. And the tip was, to their eyes, from the both of us. In any case, it's nothing for you to worry about. You should save what you have."

Cloud looked back at the inn with the side mirror, brow knitting as it disappeared around a corner. "Do we have to leave?"

"Mm." And that was all they said. They were too high up in the mountains to get a radio station, and it was still so early that Cloud found himself asleep, waking only briefly when he felt Sephiroth's hand touch his hair, stroke it lightly as they went. It only helped to coax him further into sleep, and the drive back to Midgar was spent much the same as the drive to the inn.

***

The time had come. At the end of spring, Cloud found an envelope waiting for him at the apartment that gave his schedule for the upcoming SOLDIER acceptance exams. They were to last two full days; the first day would include the academic studies as well as the psychological and normal physical testing. The second day, in the morning, he and the other eligible candidates would face Third Class Soldiers, one-on-one, with the sword, to be judged by a panel of officers. They would have only a few hours to refresh themselves; at noon they were to report to a room in a block Cloud had never heard of, for something that was not listed, but Cloud had the sinking feeling it was a combat simulation.

Zack saw him reading the schedule in the entryway, and wandered over to read it over his shoulder. Noticing that Cloud seemed frozen, Zack put a hand on Cloud's shoulder.

"Don't worry, Cloud. You've spent the last two years training for this."

"But what about that last thing?" Cloud asked, turning, looking at Zack with wide eyes. "I don't think that that--it's not something like a patrol, is it."

Zack shook his head. "No. I believe they refer to it as an 'extreme controlled environment.' I can't say anything else other than that, except maybe it isn't so frightening as it sounds. Trust me. And we'll work hard together, okay, right up until the day before. That way, you'll be more than ready. All right?" And Zack pulled him close, gave him one of his large warm hugs, and Cloud nodded.

He wanted to believe Zack was right.

So, that entire week, he never saw Sephiroth, though from time to time in the training gyms or even just walking down the hall he felt the intensity of those green eyes on him. He knew better than to turn and look; he knew better than to do anything other than what he needed to be doing, at any given point in time, because there were other stares concentrated on him as well. There were others watching him, but they weren't with the same kind of intensity.

He made a point of finding another member of squad zeta, if not Zack himself, to be with him whenever he showered after training, or even stepped into a locker room or side corridor. He never went to the apartment complex alone. Thankfully, going to the campus every morning was never a problem, even when alone, but he guessed even the monsters in the program had to sleep sometime.

He knew he had to eat, but he ate less and less as the week went on. He knew how to function on little food. It was how he had grown up. Zack didn't approve so he had to hide it from him, but it had to be better than the alternative.

***

The academic tests were bizarrely simple, or else he just went along filling in bubbles without thinking. He came out of the test winded, and couldn't remember at all what it had been about, or what the hell he had written for the written exam. What had the essay question been? They weren't allowed to speak of it, because the other half of the candidates were taking the physical portion that day and would take the academic portion the next, and the students who were willing to risk expulsion by speaking about it weren't the students whose company Cloud welcomed.

The doctor at his physical exam looked at him knowingly when he took Cloud's weight down, but he said nothing and ordered him to simple, stupid things, like touch his toes, stretch up, do twenty jumping jacks and get on the treadmill. He was timed, tested, measured, told to piss into a cup, and then given an injection of something that all of the candidates were being given. The doctor never said what it was, but Cloud was told to wait in the room for an hour. Naked and cold and sitting on the hard board of the examination table, in the sterile white light, he sat hunched with his arms folded and his hands clenched about his arms, trying desperately not to shake. The hour passed like agony and the doctor returned, took many of the measurements again, had him piss into a different cup again, and then handed him his uniform and told him that the results of his physical would influence whether or not he was admitted into the SOLDIER program, now please go up the hall to begin the psychological examination and don't let the door slam you on the ass.

Well, maybe he didn't say that last part, at least not out loud, but Cloud could hear it in his voice. Then again, he probably had to repeat that spiel at least another hundred times that day, so reasonably, Cloud thought, he couldn't blame him. He tried not to.

He passed by a familiar professor in the hallway. He kept his eyes forward, and the professor had his head down and didn't seem to notice him. Though he had had nothing to eat, he still had to fight off the urge to dry heave.

The psychological exam was taken in a room much like the one for his physical. The doctor and his assistants had him sit on the table, and told him he would spend the next hour or so under hypnosis. They injected him with something, and after a few moments of nausea, he slipped into something else.

He came back to himself to find a nurse guiding him by the arm out the door. He couldn't remember it at all, but he tasted blood faintly on his lips.

He looked up at the clock. It was 1900 hours. Disturbed, he waited in the campus's front lobby for Zack to come off duty. Zack met him, saw him sitting despondent in his seat, and ruffled his hair.

"Let's head home. I'll make spaghetti."

Food had never sounded so good.

That night, he got out of the shower and went to bed shivering, though he couldn't sleep. He kept chattering, and tears leaked from his eyes even though he couldn't figure out why. It didn't last long before Zack joined him in the bed, murmured that it was all right, hugged him tight and said he'd stay until Cloud fell asleep. Cloud couldn't believe it but said nothing, felt so badly that Zack was doing so much for him that he forced himself to lay perfectly still, grit his teeth so hard that they couldn't chatter. The chill eventually fell away to Zack's warmth, however, and the exhaustion caught up to him.

He woke up only two hours later to get ready for the rest of his testing, and heard Zack cursing the alarm clock.

***

Zack went with him that morning to the SOLDIER campus. Cloud knew that his friend was going to serve as a judge on one of the panels, but they both knew without Zack speaking that Cloud would not see Zack, either as judge or as friend, until the day was done. They had to separate in front of the candidates' locker rooms, and Zack put a hand on Cloud's shoulder, gripped it, looked him in the eye.

"You'll make it. You'll do better than make it. You'll pass with flying, glowing, shining colors and rose petals and girls fawning all over you. You will make my passing look like a miracle. You will totally kick ass. Okay?"

"Kick ass." Cloud took a deep breath, released it, paused. "Do they have to be shining as well as glowing?"

Zack blinked. "Uh. Would you prefer a rainbow of colors?"

Cloud blanched. "Not really."

"Well then." The grip on his shoulder tightened again. "I guess you should go."

"Yeah."

Some other troopers glanced at them oddly as they went into the locker room. Another one straggled by, dragging on his feet. They could smell the alcohol on his breath.

Cloud shifted. "I think you have to let me go, Zack."

"Well then." Zack nodded, stepped back. "You take care, kiddo. I'll see you when it's all done. I'll wait for you in the lobby."

"Okay." Cloud started to the door, had one hand on the knob, looked back at Zack. "Bye."

And he went in without looking back, too afraid to see the expression on his friend's face.

***

The swords were blunt but that didn't stop them from hurting like hell when they hit you. He grit his teeth, glared up at the Third Class, a young man with hazel eyes like Ruggard's, only with the Mako glow about the pupil. He shoved hard against the blade, ducked under a swipe and forced his own up, managed to catch the Soldier in the arm, but only for a split second before the Third Class's sword switched direction and twirled and something happened before his blade was wrenched from his hand, the separation painful and even more jarring than the boot against his chest, knocking him down to the floor.

"Bout three is over. Candidate Strife, you are dismissed. Assemble at the rendezvous point at the time given on your schedule."

The Third Class held out a hand to him, but Cloud forced himself to his feet on his own. He was surprised to find the Soldier still holding his hand to him, and Cloud took it. The Third Class nodded to him, released him and headed for the panel of judges to discuss the bouts with them before they took on the next candidate.

He stepped outside. It was still early, but he could see the other troopers waiting nervously in lines outside the doorways of each training gym. Those who were finished all drifted back to the locker rooms, or some headed straight to the lounges.

Cloud went to the locker room and the bathroom, relieved himself and sat for a few moments on one of the benches, ignoring the one or two others who came and went. After he had cooled off, he drank as much water as he could force himself, and left the locker room before any others finished, stepped out into the hallway and considered where he should go. He wasn't allowed to leave the campus until the exam was completely over.

He went to the library. He set his watch to go off an hour before he had to report at the rendezvous point, and he curled up in one of the armchairs, and he tried to sleep. He managed to nod off, and managed to wake up on time. He spent half that hour just staring into nothing, just concentrating on breathing. He stopped by another bathroom on the way, spent ten minutes coughing nothing but spit and blood into a toilet, washed his mouth out with water, and then headed across the campus to a wing he had never been in before, the southern wing. He arrived outside the doors to the southern wing to find only twenty others there. They were all clumped into little groups, and glanced up at him, but kept their conversations to themselves. None of them made any attempt to include them. He stood to the side, waited. The rest of the hundred showed up, most of them within the last five minutes. The doors opened precisely when the clock struck the hour.

An officer stood on the other side, as well as a squad of First Class Soldiers. The walls of the room behind them were lined with lockers.

"Each locker has been assigned a number which matches your Shinra Military Personnel Identification. Find your locker and suit up with the supplies within. Inside you will find your assignment. In exactly five minutes, the doors on the other side of this room will open. You have one minute to move out. Then the doors will close and lock, and will not open. Good luck. Your five minutes begin now."

The one hundred troopers rushed in, and as soon as they were all inside the room the doors slammed shut, leaving them in with the officer and the squad of First Classes. Cloud found his number easily enough, as they were all done sequentially, opened the locker and found to his dismay that the supplies were fairly limited--but then, it was probably the same for all of them. He hurriedly got out of his regular uniform and pulled on the forest camou in the locker, assembled his weapon, readied the few restoratives he was allowed in his pack, doublechecked his ammo, grabbed and ripped open the envelope with his assignment.

[CANDIDATE: Strife, Cloud  
MISSION TYPE: Solo  
ASSIGNMENT: Target and destroy specimen 58-46CS, dragon-type, see following specs for identification. 58-46CS will patrol north-eastern region, but will leave to seek prey wandering nearby. Other troopers will have to travel through region to complete their objectives; your success is imperative for their own.

After 58-46CS is engaged and destroyed, locate fort in eastern region. Within fort is the only exit from the testing grounds.

ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETE ASSIGNMENT: Five hours.]

The doors began to open. Cloud looked down at his assignment one more time, stared at the picture identifying his quarry, cursed, tore the assignment paper and dropped it as the First Classes began yelling at them to move their scrawny asses. Cloud went with the others, unable to see what lay beyond the door until those in front burst through and he stumbled after.

It was a simulation, all right, an environment that looked similar to the Midgar Mountains, with forests lush and green and simulated sunlight coming down through the trees. He didn't take time to stare, however, but checked the compass on his watch and started straight into the foliage. Other troopers were already gathering into groups, squads, while others went off solo like him.

***

They had never said that a possible assignment would be to locate a specific trooper down and demobilize him. It had never occurred to Cloud that that could be the case, until another trooper rushed at him while he was crossing a clearing. He had already engaged smaller monsters, brainless things that a round or two from his machine gun finished off. But this was another candidate, and since the rounds were real and they weren't supposed to kill one another, the candidate came at him with a dagger. Cloud had only managed to hear him because even though what he heard most clearly was the blood pounding in his ears, everything else came through clearer. The hurried steps came up quietly right behind him, and he turned just in time to block a sudden swipe with his machine gun. He cursed, stumbled back, fell over, and the other candidate was on top of him.

"Not supposed--kill," Cloud managed to get out through grit teeth, trying not to let the other wrestle his machine gun from him.

"Not kill, demobilize--!"

"Fuck that--" He managed to cuff the other in the jaw with the butt of his machine gun, but the candidate recovered, punched him hard in the stomach. The gun was knocked away and the other tried to pin him down, tried to roll him onto his stomach so he could pin him and demobilize him with whatever means SOLDIER had given him. Cloud growled, fought back, and they rolled in the grass, punching, kicking, scrabbling at one another until they heard frenzied machine gun shots, a scream. Cloud titled his head back, the candidate looked up, and they saw the 58-46CS come out from the trees. It wasn't as large a dragon as the one Sephiroth had killed in the mountains, but it was bigger than either of them.

"Ah, hell," the candidate muttered. He began looking frantically for Cloud's machine gun.

"Get off me and run," Cloud snapped, "the bastard's my target--"

"Damned if you think I'm gonna lose, just let me take you out and he'll leave us alone, he's programmed, all the goddamned monsters are--holy hell--"

He fell, rolled to his side. Cloud caught the smell of blood but wasn't certain what had happened. He rolled to, got up just to see the other candidate scrabbling at a wound in his shoulder, with blood--and the screaming--the thing had spit acid--

He looked up at the 58-46CS in time to see it pulling its head back, preparing to spit again, and cursed, diving for his machine gun. He managed, ignored the hissing as the acid glob sped past and began eating into a nearby tree, and glanced worriedly at the other candidate. The wound was spreading; the candidate had fallen onto his back and was rolling about, shrieking. Cloud's own breath caught and he was frozen, the realization hitting him harder than the dragon could have. The candidate was going to die. The environment was supposed to be controlled, under constant surveillance. Where the hell were the Soldiers? Weren't there supposed to be some to prevent something like this from happening?

The dragon started coming closer, losing interest in Cloud and advancing on the candidate. Cloud's hands gripped his gun and he screamed, rushing at it, which was the worst thing he could do but he couldn't let it reach the wounded--

It looked up at his scream, and twirled with unexpected agility on its two feet; its tail caught him straight across the chest and winded him, knocking him onto his back several feet away. It took him a moment to regain any movement, and even then he knew to roll, just as the acid landed where he had been. He got onto his knees, aimed, fired, but the bullets hardly put a dent into its side. It lowered its head and charged at him, mouth gaping open as it came closer, and he fired right down its throat before diving again to the side. It roared, shook its head, but his attack had an even better effect than he had expected--the bullets had ruptured its acid pouches. The dragon screamed, head thrashing from side to side, and started at him again, tripped within the first four steps and crashed into the ground, thrashing. Cloud grimaced at the pain in his chest but started to run back to where the other candidate lay, only stopped. Bone showed now clearly at the shoulder, burned white. The other candidate was still save for the shuddering, and Cloud forced himself to the other young man's side, tried to take his pulse, tried to think of something he could do. There was no sign of any help yet, and he couldn't hear any other troopers, especially over the death throes of the monster.

"Dammit, I can't--a potion couldn't--" He fished through his own supplies, uncorked the bottle specified as the generic restorative, and apologized before pouring it over the other's wound. The candidate's crying began again and he reacted, his other fist coming up in a hard punch to the side of Cloud's face, knocking him clear off his side. Cloud fell over, cursed, and started to get up, only to notice that something else was wrong, now. The young man's injury, the edges of his flesh, had become coated in green.

He looked up to the tree where what he had thought to be acid had landed, and then again toward the grass. There were bizarre growths. Even the dragon, now lying still, seemed to have something coming out of its jaws--something pulsing, and moving.

"What--" A hand closed around his throat. Cloud gasped, struggled, but froze as the other trooper slammed him onto his back and got on top of him. The shoulder wasn't healed, but the flesh that had replaced the bone, the muscle, wasn't what it had been--now scaled, and blue-veined, and the eyes that stared at him from behind the visor were burning with a hideous green glow.

Both hands closed around his throat now. Cloud coughed, choked, scrabbled at the grip, tried bucking the other off, but nothing seemed able to move it. His windpipes were cut off; he gasped, tried hitting at the helmet, until one of his flailing hands managed to find the handle of the candidate's dagger. He drove it into the shoulder, heard the scream, saw a splurt of brackish fluid from the new wound. He shoved the thing off him, grabbed his machine gun. He fired first at the growth from the dragon, again at the tree, again at the ground. When it came back to the writhing form on the ground, the candidate that had been human before, Cloud only stared. He couldn't--

He swallowed, stumbled back, finally turned and ran into the forest, choking back something other than air. He ran, and he ran.

***

The fort stood out from the foliage like a sore thumb, but Cloud, watching it from within the safety of the branches of a tree, thought it was probably the one thing about this whole controlled environment that never changed. He had encountered a few other troopers on his way to the fort, but though each time they all froze, uncertain what to do, he only turned and ran. He was too afraid, and he knew it.

But there were Soldiers in the fort, not just robotic sentinels, some of which some of the other groups had been trying to take out for what must have been hours. He had seen the Soldiers patrolling the inner premises, beyond the wall. And he had seen one or two of them come back into the fort using small doors at the junction where the fort wall met the sheer rock face wall of the massive chamber. He sat in the tree, watched the patrols, tried to figure it out. Getting close enough to one of the doors without getting seen and targeted by the robots would be difficult. If he waited for another one of the squads to show up and attack the fort outright, he might manage. But once inside, how was he supposed to avoid the First Classes?

He looked at his watch, cursed. He knew they had a time limit. He just wasn't certain what it was. He wondered if anyone knew. He wondered if anyone had found that other candidate yet, if anyone or anything could have saved him. Then he shuddered, and scaled back down the tree. He didn't have a choice. He'd have to risk it.

He stuck as close to the shadows and the undergrowth as he could, glad the camou gave him some protection, so long as he was careful enough. He made it to the fort wall, and pried open one of the doors, shuddering because the space within wasn't so much of an entrance as it was a crawlspace. When he came through, he would be on his belly. He slung his machine gun before realizing it wouldn't fit through the space, and finally dumped it--he couldn't use it against the Soldiers, in any case. He drew the dagger, kept the point facing away from him as he got down and began crawling forward, using his elbows and knees to push himself forward, and thankful for once that he was so small, because that made the crawlspace not as unbearable as it would be if his shoulders were just a little wider.

It was a long little tunnel, but he made it to the other side, and watched from the dark, saw one of the patrols marching away from the crawlspace. He waited just a moment longer, then hurried out, got onto his knees, and found the doorway that would lead inside the fort, and hopefully to the end of the exam. The door was unlocked. He opened it just wide enough to slip in and closed it. Then he turned, only to find another Soldier, armed with a sword, swing at him.

Cursing, he ducked as the first blow went over him. His dagger wasn't going to do him any good; the sword was a Buster Sword. He stood up with his dagger held before him, glaring at his opponent, knowing that just beyond him and at the end of the hall was the way out. How the hell was this guy supposed to manage against an entire group of troopers, if they got in?

He just stared, and the other stared at him, Buster Sword held lightly as a simple stick, not a massive weapon. There was a nick on its side. Cloud blinked, froze in recognition--and suddenly the sword and Soldier moved, and he was knocked flat against the wall, the blade of the sword against his throat.

The First Class looked down the hall, shouted to someone or something in the shadows, "Got another one. Exam over. Candidate..." And he looked down. "What's your name?"

Cloud wasn't aware of dropping the dagger. "Zack," he whispered, voice hoarse. "It's me."


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

He found himself in a separate room an hour later, a room apart from all the other candidates. Zack had been relieved by another Soldier in the shadows to escort Cloud out from the chamber, and listened as Cloud told him about the monster, about what had happened to the other candidate. He thought he was babbling, but Zack listened to him gravely, cursed, shouted for an officer. He told the officer concisely what Cloud had told him, and the man said they'd have to look into it immediately, and had Zack take Cloud to some kind of room--he gave it an actual label, but Cloud couldn't make it out. He figured it out on his own.

He was being quarantined until they knew what happened. Even Zack disappeared for a time, though Cloud thought he could hear Zack's voice. He sat in the cell--there was no other word for it--clasping his arms, wondering why he was so cold when not more than an hour ago he had never felt so hot his entire life, not even when out on real missions. A medic came in at one point to check him out, take measurements, and then said everything was "satisfactory" before leaving.

Finally, the door opened and Zack came in. Another man came in after him, the officer who had been with the First Classes before the test started. Zack shut the door and stood to attention, and Cloud, realizing this man was probably not far beneath Sephiroth, struggled to get up to his feet, until the man shook his head and motioned for him to remain seated.

"We're looking into it," the officer said, voice deep and as grizzled as his face, yet inexplicably calm. "The incidents connected to your exam are in fact troublesome, but from what we have seen we know you were not involved as anything other than a victim. You were not injured by the 58-46CS, correct? Good. We see no reason to keep you any longer, then. Dismissed."

"Sir," Cloud said, forced himself to stand and salute the man. The officer spoke briefly with Zack before stepping out, and Zack visibly relaxed before turning to Cloud.

"Sorry about the wait. Not only did Kado have to look into things, but we had no choice but to wait for the rest of the exams to finish up. Goddamn regulations..." Zack stopped himself, looked down at Cloud worriedly, but Cloud said nothing else, only shook his head.

***

They returned home and Cloud spent that night and much of the next day asleep, "recharging" as Zack put it. When Cloud was awake, Zack never stopped trying to get more food into him, but Cloud still found it hard to eat much. All of the SOLDIER candidates had the two days until their scores were posted to relax, which Cloud hated because it meant two days straight of worrying, save for when he slept, but when he slept he dreamed, and when he dreamed he had all manners of nightmares, mostly involving that one candidate that had come after him. He was tired, and scared, and unable to shake a feeling of guilt that it was somehow his fault that the other had died--but the Turks hadn't tried anything since--since before. Right after his fifteenth birthday, yes. They had showed up at odd moments but never bothered him anymore, since Sephiroth continued to his appointments with the professor. So who or what--?

It shook him, but he asked Zack about the exam anyway.

"Hell, kiddo, you know how many actually make it to the door, let alone past the First Class on the other side?" Zack said, cracking open the oven and looking eagerly inside. He had just bought cookie dough, declaring that it if nothing else would heal Cloud's wounds. Cloud stood in the doorway, not completely unhappy with the thought of chocolate chip cookies, but shifted, brow in a constant knot. "Maybe--maybe--one out of a hundred. Those are the two or three who wind up going straight into First Class. About where you were, depending on how the rest of it went--well, I shouldn't say."

Cloud nodded, and looked down at his feet. He wasn't expecting First Class--he never had, certainly not now. But maybe--gods, what does an interference like that do to one's score? Did anyone even get in touch with the candidate's parents to let them know of their son's bizarre death? How did they even report that?

"No one's supposed to die during the exam, either," he mumbled, and Zack's gaze snapped up to him.

"Don't start on that," Zack said, his voice a warning. "It wasn't your fault. Sweet Shiva, as soon as any of us find out what went on--be damned if not all of SOLDIER gets up in arms about it. Someone tampered on our turf, Cloud--we're not taking it lightly. Sephiroth can't be involved with the investigation, since it has to do with the exams and he's not allowed to touch anything to do with them with a ten-foot pole--or, you know, Masamune for that matter. Whichever's longer. But you can imagine the look on his face when I--" He stopped himself, looked at Cloud when he saw his young friend stop moving completely, not even shaking. "Hey. You'll see him soon. I mean, I'd figured you both thought it would be best to wait..."

Cloud nodded. "I don't think we ever said anything about it... but yeah. I think we both knew that." He turned away, shaking his head. "I'm going to go shower."

"Make sure you're back out in time for these when they're hot!" Zack called after him, and despite himself, Cloud smiled.

***

Individual reports, the board listing the ranking for the candidates declared, would be mailed out shortly with a basic breakdown of the scores. That morning, the officers and drill instructors all grumbled that they had never seen so many troopers ever turn out on time before--and then the board was turned on and there was a moment of breath-held silence, candidates searching out their names.

Cloud stood toward the back, looking desperately for his name among those grouped into the 'accepted' rankings. He didn't find it. Instead, he found himself grouped along with three other names in the smallest grouping--those who had passed all their courses and were otherwise eligible for SOLDIER, but for whatever reason had not made it in. He followed his row, checked the numbers, tried to figure it out. His overall physical score was higher than he imagined, and his academic score was higher than all of those qualified for Third Class ranking--so why the hell hadn't he managed even that?

Many of the others had begun either cheering or sagging. He did neither, only stood still in the sudden movement whereas before it had been nothing but stillness, no matter how anxious that stillness had been. He stared at his scores, unable to comprehend, staring at the one-line gap that separated his not-SOLDIER graduate group from those who would go on to become Shinra's finest. He didn't dare look lower, but he did look higher, looked at all the names listed and saw which rankings they had qualified for. He did not feel as vindicated as he might have liked that no one had managed to score highly enough for First Class ranking.

An officer came out, and ordered that the newly graduated Soldiers would need to go immediately to room 5-C in the northern wing. The others were given the rest of the day off, though the officer warned they would go back on regular duty the next day. They would be receiving further instructions shortly, in terms of transfers out of the SOLDIER candidate program and back into the army regulars. Cloud heard it all, watched as the accepted whooped and ran excitedly off to fulfill their orders. They had to get ready for what was said to be the fastest graduation and promotion ceremony ever given; he recognized several faces and he looked to the others, the rejected ones, who stood about and muttered and scuffed their shoes against the floor. The officer ordered them to leave, telling them they should enjoy their day off; they wouldn't be getting many of those once they joined the regular force.

Cloud stared at the board, even after the last of the stragglers had gone. That left him, and the board, and his own name looking at him without any meaning attached. There was no Cloud Strife, Soldier, First Class. There would never be one.

He had screwed up.

***

He thought, at first, that Sephiroth would not want to see him again. He had been found wanting by the organization, and his very name brought up murmurs and agitation over the series of accidents during his exam.

He was surprised, then, on his way out from the campus, that he saw a dark-clad figure standing outside, examining something on one of the trees of the front lawn. The man turned and looked at him, and Cloud knew the unspoken command. He went immediately to obey, stood beside the Commander, wondered what the other man would do. Though he doubted it would happen, some not so small part of himself wished Sephiroth would offer to put him out of his misery. Instead, Sephiroth looked back again at the thing on the tree, and Cloud followed his gaze, only to stare at a moth being torn apart by a stream of ants. He had never seen a thing like it, and startled when the moth and the ants suddenly sparked and disappeared in a small cloud of flame, smudged out of existence, and he looked up just as Sephiroth started walking away. He followed, finally falling into step beside the Commander.

They walked to the Commander's suite. Sephiroth paused long enough for Cloud to visit with the guard dogs, who hadn't seen him in so long. Then they went up to the suite, and Sephiroth let them inside, and they stood for a moment in quiet.

"Sephiroth?" Cloud mumbled.

Sephiroth shook his head. "It was a foolish battle," he said. "They would have eventually overcome the tree. Parasites."

Cloud blinked, then looked down at his boots. "I..."

"You'll receive your report and be confused by the scores, just as I'm sure you were hours ago when they revealed them," Sephiroth said, taking off his coat and hanging it, removing his gloves, his fingers sliding over the black number on the back of his left hand. Cloud noticed that there was no materia at the man's wrists, the clasps that held his gloves in place over the long sleeves of his coat, and Masamune was not at hand either. "The only issue at hand would be the psychological assessment, and a noted allergic reaction to Mako. Other than that, you could have been made a Third Class. At least." Sephiroth looked to him, face, eyes expressionless. "I'm not supposed to know any of this."

"You didn't have to look, s-sir," he said, unable to hold the older man's gaze at all. He concentrated on the grains of lighter grey among the darker shadow weave of the carpet. "You didn't have to see."

"You've read over the SOLDIER examination policy and regulation handbook several times by now, I know," Sephiroth said. "So it didn't strike you as odd that the candidate's objective to demobilize you was strictly against the rules?"

"I thought maybe it was a surprise," Cloud said, looking up, brow knitting. "A plant. To test me. And him."

"Giving troopers live ammo and then telling them to demobilize one another is like ordering them to kill one another." The man's voice was a low growl. "You're lucky he didn't shoot first, instead of going for the dagger instead. It seemed at least he had read the handbook, as well. And the monster? The tampering was obvious. Unfortunately, due to recent changes in regulation, the exact scientist who tampered with the beast and reprogrammed it cannot be determined, and none of them are going to speak. You were the target. Not the candidate, or the one it killed before it found you and the other. And if attempting to take your life by meddling with my organization's exam wasn't enough, your psychological assessment--" He cut himself off, turned away with a sound of disgust and anger.

"The Turks?" Cloud offered, but Sephiroth shook his head, turned his eyes glaring to Cloud again.

"The professor."

The man's voice was withering, and even if the anger wasn't meant for him, Cloud still shrank back. "But why?"

"Gods only know what kind of sick experiment he thinks he's performing," Sephiroth said, shaking his own head. "That's all it could be. Everything is an experiment to him. There is nothing else." Another sound, and then, "Your psychological assesment report is wiped clean. Your score was arbitrarily designated because they were unable to find the actual records. Whatever it is he gleaned from you then, he decided to keep for himself."

He put his own hands deep into his jacket's pockets. "Or maybe they just had to make the cut, and I wasn't good enough."

Sephiroth raised his eyes, but Cloud shook his head.

"I know how I did. I hoped, too, even after. But." He started for the door. "I'm not, not now, not ever. Maybe the professor was behind it. Maybe even the Vice President. He--I don't know why, but he's like that. But whoever was behind it, my scores still weren't good enough. I didn't make it. I didn't deserve to make it. I broke. I couldn't even handle seeing Zack at the very end of it all. I wanted to hide." His voice choked up, but he didn't bother hiding his face this time. "I failed. I fucking broke. I--"

"Stop it."

Cloud looked up at him, met his gaze straight on. "I'm not Zack. I'm not perfect like he is. I'm not--I could never be--I wanted to be like you, and I never stood a chance. Because maybe I'm messed up in my head, or because my own body's too weak to take a Mako shot--"

"You are not weak." Sephiroth's hand, ungloved, against the side of his face. Cloud pulled away, stumbled back, nearly fell, but the other man came around him, so fast Cloud never even saw him move, catching him and holding him, keeping him from struggling. "Cloud--" He finally pulled Cloud to the couch, forced him down, had him pinned against the cushions. Cloud stopped struggling, finally broke down completely, the tears coming freely even though his voice was too hoarse for crying. Fingers curled about Sephiroth's hair and gripped it so tightly the older man winced, but he shifted, forced himself down beside Cloud, held him as closely as he could, listened to the frustration, the anger, the sickness. At some point all noise left Cloud completely, though there was no sleep; just bitterness, and red eyes from crying too long, and pushing his face where it always fit along the crook of Sephiroth's neck. His breath came out in a long shudder.

"Why?" he breathed, and the other man made a soft sound of consideration first.

"Because, you're mine."

And because it was Sephiroth, he had no choice but to believe him.

***

Cloud listened to the tone, waited a moment, heard the tone again, and then Zack picked up.

"Donovan here."

"Hi, Zack," he said.

"Whoa, you okay? Your voice--Cloud, where are you?"

"I'm with our friend," he said. "I wanted to tell you, I can't come tonight."

"You already knew about the party?"

His smile held little humor. "Well, James and Tom have only been planning it for months."

"Cloud--"

"It's all right, Zack." He looked to where Sephiroth sat nearby, watching him. Almost all of the suite was in darkness, save for this light in the kitchen. He found Sephiroth best by looking for those eyes. "I think I'm better here, right now."

"Will you come home tomorrow?"

"I think so. I have to get my new assignment, right?"

"You know, this doesn't mean you'll be kicked out of my squadron."

"It doesn't mean they won't try to transfer me out, either," Cloud said. Zack made a noise of grudging agreement.

"We'll fight like hell if they try something like that, kiddo. Bastards. Shit, Cloud, I don't know what to say about your--"

"Zack, don't. It's all right."

"Pardon me for saying so, kiddo, but it doesn't sound all right."

"It will be. I will be. Promise."

"Hrm. Only if you say so. But I want to see you home tomorrow sometime, okay?"

"Mm." He nodded, and he tried to smile. "Tell them I said I'm sorry, and congratulations, you know?"

"I do, and I'll make sure they know. Don't worry about it. Take care, and get some rest, all right?"

"Thank you. You, too. All right?" And they traded farewells, and he hung up the phone, and looked to Sephiroth.

"It's all right with him, then, I take it."

He nodded. "Yes..."

"So," and the other man stood, came closer. "Let's get some rest. I've not fared well as of late, myself."

"Thought you looked tired round the eyes," Cloud mumbled, and because he was too short even standing on his toes, he had to wait for Sephiroth to lean down before he could kiss him. It brought some amusement back to the older man's eyes, and Cloud could not help but feel some measure of warmth return to him already. He could still make Sephiroth smile.

Gods, that had to count for something.

***

It was the end of summer, or coming close enough to it that when they stepped outside onto the roof, Cloud was glad he had thought to bring his jacket with them. They sat down as they used to before, and Zack popped open both their bottles.

"So?"

Zack tipped his bottle back, swished the liquid about in his throat, and then said, "Yeah?"

"Why aren't you out this weekend," Cloud said, because it wasn't really a question. He tilted his head back, watched the writhing Midgar sky. It was exactly the same as when he first came, even if then it had been so cold outside. It was going to be that time of year again soon, he knew, but...

"You mean with her."

"Mm." Cloud took a sip of his own drink. He wasn't so sure he liked the taste of beer. It was a little too rough, though maybe it was just this brand. He hadn't had enough of anything to really know, other than the occasional wine Sephiroth gave him.

Zack sighed. "I don't know. We're all right. Just... not so much together anymore."

"You've not... broken up?"

"Not yet. I think it has to do with her mom. She's anxious. I can't decide whether or not she wants me to ditch my girl completely, marry her, or what."

Cloud blinked, then looked to his friend. "Well, which do you want to do?"

"Hell if I know. I thought--we were fine. Just this year. Damned if I know what happened, but somewhere in there... She started closing up. Seems to look over her shoulder all the damned time now. I'm not sure, I knew--" And he stopped himself, looked down at Cloud. For once, Cloud found his eyes unreadable. "I've been through a few before, two were a lot worse than this. It sounds bad, you know? But we've got some time left. We're not done yet, I can tell. Before next big mission, though... I don't know what I'll tell her. Don't know yet. Maybe I won't have to. She's so strange. Sometimes, it's like she knows exactly what I'm thinking, even when I don't know what the hell is going through my own brain."

Cloud looked down at the bottle between his legs, and thought for a moment. "She sounded so nice. I kept thinking maybe one day I'd actually meet her."

"I think you'd like her," Zack mumbled, closing his eyes and leaning his head back again. "She's a good girl. Too good for me."

"You're plenty good," Cloud started, and Zack laughed, ruffled his hair. "You are!"

But Zack and his girl were drifting apart. Cloud noticed it in little things, at first. Zack brought less flowers home, and spent less and less time out visiting with her. He opted to go out on walks with Cloud instead, and Cloud was thankful for the end of the exams for at least one thing--his free time was no longer completely dominated by studying, though he still trained and read when he could. Still, he thought Zack had started coming closer to him, with little things, little touches, and since he had long since been used to Zack in his personal space, this didn't bother him. But it was enough to notice, and it was enough to make him wonder.

His birthday was a strictly private affair that year between himself, and Zack, and Sephiroth. There was another tin of cookies from his mother, and they had ice cream and cake, and more of that Toxic Venus concoction that Zack made so well. There was more kissing than the year before, and Cloud woke up with a headache and Sephiroth on one side, and Zack not far from his other. Sephiroth assured him there had been nothing, and nudged Zack awake long enough to make Cloud one of his cure-alls for the alcohol. They spent the rest of that morning sleeping it off, all of them, and though Cloud spent it curled up against Sephiroth's side, he still thought about it. He thought Sephiroth had thought about it, too. There was a considering way he tilted his head when he looked at Zack that meant something.

The summer left completely. In its place came fall, which for Midgar was only a slightly warmer prelude to winter. Zack's next big mission came, and the two of them were surprised to find that they would be joining Sephiroth, another trooper, and a driver, on a highly classified mission to an undisclosed area. They would ship out in a day, go to Costa del Sol, and continue following orders as Sephiroth received them until they arrived at the area.

The last letter Cloud was to receive from his mother never reached him. It went straight to the empty apartment, where it sat on the floor with several other pieces of mail for several months, before finally the Shinra confiscated it and all other possessions within the apartment.

The letter was opened, read by indifferent eyes, considered trash, and burned.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

Costa del Sol was mostly closed to them, as they were only staying there overnight. Their ship arrived at sunset, and so they got to see the tourists and locals out on the beach, enjoying themselves. Cloud wondered if winter ever did come, or if the people who lived and worked there absorbed so much of summer and sunshine that they carried it with them even into the late fall, but Zack explained that because of Costa del Sol's position on the coast, it rarely got so cold there, but remained temperate all through winter. Cloud found it amazing, but couldn't talk because his stomach churned and the ship hit a couple of rough waves. Then he looked up, and stared as they came closer to the dock; he saw a building, one he'd remember if only because, little more than two years ago, he had sat beneath its eaves and counted what little gil he had. Not that he had that much more, now, but--

"Something wrong?" Zack asked him, and he shook his head.

"Just strange. Seeing it all. Again." He looked up at Zack, slight frown in place. "I never--this is better than before--last time--but I--"

Zack grew more worried when Cloud cut off, looked again at the line of stucco buildings. "What? Cloud, are you all right?"

"Just. It feels odd." Cloud rubbed his stomach, grimaced. "Though maybe that's just my stomach."

"Hey, at least it's not affecting you so badly."

"Cause we're up here, not down there," Cloud muttered, shaking his head. "Gods help me, if our destination's too far away, and we have to go in one of those trucks..."

Zack rubbed his back. "Hey. You'll be all right. Don't worry about it yet. Not even Seph knows where we're going just yet, so it could even be Corel, or one of the bases here on the coast. Not so far away then, right?"

"Right..."

"Hey, and we did get some good news. Staying the night in Costa del Sol. Not actually in any of the resorts, of course, but on the base--that's fine by me, though, you know why?" When Cloud shook his head, Zack grinned. "That stretch of the beach is military only. No tourists, no crowds, no anybody except for the occasional 'let's slip over beyond the barricade and fool around' people, but I think they learned that that was a bad idea after that one actor got caught--"

Cloud blinked. "You're babbling."

His friend stopped, thought, and then shrugged. "I'm nervous too? Something doesn't quite smell right. At first, Seph and I thought maybe it was a high level monster extermination mission--maybe even a meta class, you know? I mean, why else send the two highest ranking among SOLDIER and some of the best troopers--don't make that face, kiddo."

"It's not that." Cloud leaned his chin on his arms, closing his eyes. "Just tired, I guess."

"Hmm." Zack didn't sound entirely convinced, but let the matter drop. He saw the other trooper, called out to him, went to speak to him shortly. Cloud lost himself in the sounds, tried to concentrate more on that than anything else. Sephiroth had spent practically the entire time aboard the ship in the captain's cabin, and his work kept him there except for the occasional walk about deck, and they couldn't exactly be intimate; there were so many places to hide on a ship, but so few opportunities to find them and not get found out, because all of the sailors already knew all those places, and, as he knew well, tended to use them for stowaways or their own entertainment. Cloud found the magazines and their infamous spreads, tucked away in the same hiding places. As much as the naval and regular army forces griped, snarked, and complained about each other behind the other's collective back, there were more similarities than they'd want to admit.

Getting onto dry land again was as disorienting as getting off of a constantly rumbling truck. He had to go through his routine of standing still for a count of ten seconds before making any kind of movement. Zack was well-used to this routine, and Sephiroth had to go ahead to meet with one of the highest ranking officers; it looked as though they'd spend all their time here at Costa del Sol apart, as well. It brought down Cloud's spirit, but bed sounded so good at that point, not to mention a warm shower...

He came out to find the other trooper asleep and snoring in the bed. Zack was asleep in a single, and there was no telling where Sephiroth was. He pulled on his fatigues, pulled on his boots, and went outside. There were a few times he was required to show ID, but generally the beach wasn't restricted so long as one was a member of the military, and he went out onto the sands, yanked his boots back off and stood, shifting from side to side.

There had been sand up in the garden of the hot spring inn, but it hadn't been quite like this. There was even black sand, near some of the mountain lakes--those that actually had sand instead of rocks. His mother had said that there was nothing like standing in the wet sand of a beach, though, and he tried it then, walked closer until the white-lit wavelets touched his toes. He jolted a bit at the cold, then took another step or two--again, it wasn't as if he hadn't gone swimming in the cold of Nibelheim. After a moment of shifting, he was fine, and he stared at the way his feet seemed to sink into the sand, bit by bit. He thought maybe this was what it felt like to get planted.

Then he looked up at the moon. It was waning, gibbous still but fading away. Then the clouds covered it and he looked out at the ocean again.

"You should be careful," said a quiet voice from behind. "Monsters do roam the beaches, from time to time. Even here, so close to human habitation. Maybe because of it."

He twisted, looked behind him and smiled. "I'm not afraid."

"Are you?" Sephiroth stepped behind him, slipped his arms around him. There wasn't the leather, only some other kind of jacket; not boots, either, or the man's usual leather pants. It wasn't often one saw the Commander in his own kind of civilian clothing, and Cloud grinned even before he arched his head back and met the older man's smile.

"Shouldn't we--mm--be worried about patrols?"

"Heh. We have thirty minutes before the next one comes." He looked down the beach, then at Cloud. "Walk with me?"

He didn't have to answer with his voice, but he did turn in closer against the man's side as they started walking, happy to feel the arm around him, happy to feel the warmth in the midst of the cool night winds. The water ran over their ankles; the sand stuck to the pads of their feet. It was a short walk, and when they left, the waves took their footprints with them, and it was as if their walk had never happened.

***

They traveled in truck, and a week passed as they moved from one obscure Shinra base to another. Cloud ran out of what motion sickness medicine he had managed to find in Costa del Sol, and they found no other place that offered anything that could compare--or at least, nothing that they knew to be actually sanitary, or would allow him to keep any kind of lucidity. Ever since the Turks had forced those drugs down his throat, Cloud had become a bit wary of anything that might cause him to lose lucidity, but it didn't help that one drug offered to him somewhere between Corel and Gongaga looked similar to a drug often confiscated on the streets of Midgar.

Sephiroth and Cloud didn't get any more time together the entire trip. At least, certainly not alone, and each night at one of the bases or out on the road Cloud wished Sephiroth would call him aside to speak to him, for whatever reason--either to "correct" him on proper military behavior or to assign him a specific task. But Sephiroth never did, and Cloud knew better than to try to force anything. Zack told him the Commander was only taking special precautions--the other trooper was good, but there was no telling if there could be a mole planted among them to keep an eye on things.

"It's not above Hojo--or any of the other Shinra executives, either," Zack said. "Hell, he could be reporting back to several of them." They were out performing a simple recon of the area, several miles north of Gongaga--they were avoiding Zack's hometown for reasons of secrecy, which made Zack snicker and remark that anything found in Gongaga wasn't exactly getting out, certainly not to Midgar newspapers--and Zack paused beside a leatherleaf, looked at it, wondered. "Worrisome, but... they'll never give up, will they?"

Cloud muttered under his breath, but Zack did catch it, laughed.

"S-sorry, kiddo, just--gods--the thought of you, knocked up--ow!"

"I'm serious, Zack," Cloud snapped, but when Zack looked to him apologetically, his anger turned to a pout, though Zack knew better than to call it that to his face when Cloud prefaced it with "I'm serious." "I mean, I thought that was all those kinds of things worried about--who was getting who pregnant and with what and I mean--what does that matter, anyway?"

"Well, it's not just that, Cloud, and definitely not with the Commander," Zack said. "I mean, he's the only one like himself. There's no other way to put it, right? Human, but--so fast, so strong, he outdoes everyone, everything. You know Hojo would try to claim the kid for his own reasons, and the rest of Shinra would want to keep wraps on the entire thing for PR, and if it ever got out that the man--"

"I know, I know." Cloud reached down, picked up a long stick, bent it. "I just--it's so stupid."

Zack scratched his chin. "People can be awfully stupid, kiddo."

"Stupid, and mean," Cloud muttered, finally tossing the stick aside.

"Look at it this way," and Zack put an arm around his shoulders, drew him closer, "at least this means you're not hated by everyone else in the world who's ever had their eye on him, you know? At least you've been kept out of everyone else's view. Hell, probably part of the reason why Seph allows any of that bullshit still is because you've been protected, in a weird way. For all the wrong reasons, but... you take what you can get, right?"

"Mm." Cloud scuffed up some grass with his boot. "I guess so."

"Cheer up, okay? Seph said he'd finally receive full orders once we reached the checkpoint north of Cosmo Canyon."

Cloud bit his lower lip, but before he could say anything, Zack's one-armed embrace tightened, and the First Class said, "Hey, don't worry about it. No point in worrying about something when we might not have to deal with it. Take it a step at a time, okay?"

"One step... right."

***

Sephiroth's voice was so cold and clipped, Cloud couldn't bear to look across the truck at him. He only clutched his helmet tighter in his hands, and heard the words under the relentless beat of rain against the truck.

"Brutal creatures?" Zack echoed, his voice growing quiet with disbelief as the realization settled on him, as well. "Where?"

"The Mako Reactor," and though it lasted only a second, Cloud felt the glance in his direction, "at Nibelheim."

"Nibelheim," Cloud whispered, felt his throat closing up on him. "That's..." He could see it in his mind's eye, his mother, their small house, she up in the mountains, one of the dragons or even a band of Nibel wolves-- "...where I'm from." The disbelief stole any sense of logic, stole everything, even when he heard the other trooper shift, straighten, as if more interested then.

Sephiroth opted for feigned ignorance, and nodded thoughtfully. "Hmm... Hometown."

The driver cursed, and slammed on the brakes--everyone cried out save for Zack and Sephiroth, fighting to stay upright as the truck careened on two wheels, then landed on all four again with a sputter of the engine. Cloud had felt something hit the side of the truck, not far from where he rested; he stared at the sudden indent of the metal, and the driver turned around, his voice little more than a panicked yelp.

"Sir, s-something strange just crashed into our truck!"

The Commander was too somber to roll his eyes at the statement, and only stood, going to the back doors of the truck with Masamune at hand. "That would be our monster," he muttered, throwing them open and jumping out. Zack, Buster Sword at his back, was right behind him.

Shaken, Cloud snatched up his helmet from where it had fallen from his hands, and shuddered when he heard a familiar roar. He steeled himself and followed the other trooper cautiously out the back, and they both stood in the rain and stared, awe-struck, as Zack and Sephiroth confronted what Cloud had known it would be: a Nibel dragon, gigantic, flames curling from its maw and wings outstretched.

***

Home.

Cloud only vaguely heard Sephiroth discussing the Shinra's orders with the truck's driver. The driver was to report back to the small Shinra base north of the Cosmos Desert, and remain there unless they called for assistance or to inform him of the completion of the mission. The Shinra wanted as few eyes to see this as they could, apparently, but Cloud couldn't hear the rest of it. The other trooper hoisted his supply pack onto his back and kept sending Cloud strange looks, but Cloud only stared through the pines, to the worn rock wall and the old gate and, beyond it in the town circle, the old water tower.

"Hey," Zack said, clapping a hand down onto his shoulder. Cloud startled, gasped and practically hunched into the protective mantle of the trooper uniform, staring up at Zack with wide eyes. Zack's light-heartedness faded completely, transformed into concern, and he kept his voice low. "Cloud, are you gonna be all right? You've turned stark white, and I haven't seen you act like this since--since--" He paused, thought, shook his head. "--since a long time ago."

"I c-can't do it, Zack," Cloud said, looking back up the dirt path. "Can't. She. I can't. Not like this."

"Cloud, we went over this before, right?" Zack whispered. "You know. About SOLDIER. And your exams."

He shook his head more vigorously, and snatched up his pack. "Not that, Zack. It's..."

"Donovan, Strife," and it was Sephiroth, looking up the path as well. "It's time."

"Sir," and Zack's hand gave Cloud's shoulder another squeeze before he slung his own pack of supplies over his shoulder, lifted and let the Buster Sword rest on his back, in its proper place. Cloud followed, and they got close to the gate before he realized he had left behind his helmet. He ran back to the path as the driver got back into the truck and grabbed his helmet with shaking hands, lifted it to his head and rejoined the others.

***

Home.

He lay on his old bed, staring up at the wooden rafters and the familiar slant of the roof, helmet forgotten at the foot of the bed, his supplies somewhere at the door. His mother had given up speaking to him; he had given up trying to say everything to her that he wanted to say. The words stuck in his throat, a lump that he couldn't swallow away. She hummed in the kitchen, went about preparing food. She had mentioned something about taking some of it to the others, if he wanted, or inviting them all to the house--it wasn't much, but she could make enough for all of them.

He couldn't agree, however, and she saw that. She had only nodded, and turned back to the kitchen.

So there he was, and there was she. He looked over at her, looked at the way her long blond hair fell far past her shoulders, even tied up as it was. She didn't appear much older than she had been when he left, only he thought there were more lines around her eyes. She appeared more tired, and she said that the monsters had gotten very bad. Less grew up in the mountains, now, she said, that wasn't poisoned. She couldn't make as many of her potions, when she could make them at all. Her dress was more worn at the hem than he remembered. Wasn't it the same one she wore when he left home? He couldn't remember.

He had left home. Had he come back? He felt so strange. The town had never welcomed him to begin with, but he thought his bed would feel right. He thought speaking to his mother again would feel right.

But it wasn't right at all.

His feet kicked off his boots; they thudded to the floor, much louder than his mother's humming. She paused in the kitchen but he turned onto his side, curling up, letting his gaze grow unfocused. There was his old soft chocobo doll, sitting neglected on the small shelf of the nightstand between the beds. He reached out for the yellow smudge in his vision, lifted it, held it close and smelled it.

It smelled like Mako so badly his nose burned. He sneezed, coughed, and turned his face into his old pillow, drawing it in closer and trying to keep the noise down, but the coughing turned into something else, something he had promised he would not do, but he couldn't stop it. The wetness filled his lungs and his eyes. The sobs were the sort that hurt, the kind that caused the entire body to ache, every muscle so tense and bound up in the expulsion of those tears, the smothered crying.

***

Home.

She had only left once, and that was to get the soup off the lit eye of the stove so it wouldn't burn. Then she had come back and he hadn't even needed to move again. He was older but she could still shift him as easly as she had when he was eight and terrified that Tifa would never wake up again, that the town would never acknowledge him again, that his own mother might blame him for what he couldn't have done in the first place. So he was gathered up instead, held in her arms, held to her and his cheek lay wet against the cloth of her dress, so worn it was softer than ever. She leaned back against the headboard and he listened to the beating of her heart beneath his ear; he shut his eyes and his one hand finally released its grip on the chocobo doll.

He didn't sleep for more than a minute, but he did sleep. He could tell by the worried press of a hand against his forehead that he had just gone under, that it had happened suddenly enough to alarm his mother. It had felt a lot like a silence spell, being submerged, and waking up being too much like getting a gasp of air. Still, the words stuck in his throat stayed there, and when he sat up, pushing the heels of his palms against his eyes, he couldn't say anything.

Dinner was good. Even if the plants weren't growing so well, his mother made up for it by substituting different herbs. It made the soup taste differently, but different didn't mean bad. She asked him about the tall dark-haired Soldier that had come with him; they seemed to get on well. He answered. The words finally came, not as a flood, but with a small smile. Talking about Zack. He had enough stories to share.

His mother smiled, too, and said she was glad he had found a friend like Zack.

"A friend like that," she said, standing up when they were finished, and giving him a kiss on the forehead as she passed, "will be with you until the end of your days."

***

Home.

The hug made him realize that he had grown. He wasn't tall and he wasn't hugely muscular like some, but when he hugged her back at the door he felt like he could engulf her. It was strange. He had never realized how frail and small she was before. He wondered if that was how Zack or Sephiroth felt when they had held him, especially--especially when he was younger, and even smaller.

She said she understood. She said it was all right. And she smiled and told him that he had to drop by one more time before he left. She'd get together a few more of his things, and give him a present before he left. He said he would.

He pretended he didn't see the tears as he turned away, lifting his helm to his head, and she closed the door. He stepped out onto the cold of the square and rubbed his arms, then looked to the large house beside his mother's, the one that dwarfed it in size and extravagance. Tifa's house.

He shook his head, and went to the inn to rejoin the others.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

Cloud found Zack patrolling the town. He told Cloud that part of it was because the dragon had attacked them on their way in; the materia the Shinra had given him to try out was supposed to help him feel out aggression and prevent ambushes, and obviously it hadn't worked that time. He wasn't certain how it was supposed to just work on its own, but he said it didn't seem to require any casting to work, and anyway, he said just stepping into town had given him goosebumps.

"Speaking of aggression," Zack muttered, rubbing his arm and looking around, "what is up with this place?"

Cloud shrugged his shoulders. "Home," is all he said, and then caught Zack staring off toward the path that led up past the Shinra Mansion and north into the mountains. There was a man standing up there, looking first at them, and then crossing his arms and looking up north. Cloud looked back to Zack. "They don't like outsiders here. They don't like strange things."

"Monsters..." And Zack caught his gaze, nodded. "Of all shapes and sizes, huh? Even the ones they ask to come in and take care of the other monsters."

Cloud looked back up the path to the man, with his dark hair. "That man there."

"The one who's been giving me nothing but daggers since I asked him how he was doing?"

"Yeah. That's the mayor of the town."

Zack blinked. "Wait. I'm missing something. Or you've mentioned him to me before."

"He's Tifa's dad."

The First Class winced. "Shit. I'm sorry."

"It's all right." Cloud felt something like a smile cross his face, though he didn't think he was fooling anyone, let alone himself or Zack. "He can't exactly beat me up. If he doesn't know I'm me, I mean."

"Cloud--" Zack stopped himself, shook his head and then nodded toward the inn. "You should head on. It's getting late. I might sleep in a bit because of this patrol, but I'll meet up with you all on time. You should rest up, though." He paused again, then said, "There's a man at the inn. Nice, friendly... not from around here. Says he has a student here, and she's very gifted. This sounds a bit like the young guide who's supposed to take us up the mountain tomorrow--"

"It's all right, Zack," Cloud muttered, walking on ahead to the inn door. "I don't think she'd care even if she did see me. After all, I didn't make it."

***

Sephiroth seemed completely concentrated on the view from the window, looking out to the west. Cloud walked up the stairs to see the Commander there in the hallway, just staring, just looking. He peered into the open door of the inn's room, but didn't see or hear anyone, so he walked to Sephiroth's side and looked out as well.

The foothills of the mountains rose black above the pine trees. The sun was nothing more than a pale white smudge above the black line of the foothills, with the clouds overhead streaked with dark and light--it would rain again, soon. It wasn't an attractive view at all.

"This scenery... I feel like I know this place."

It was the absence of feeling to his voice that caused Cloud to look up at the older man, at the blank expression before his brows knit, briefly. Then he looked down, saw Cloud there.

"We have an early start tomorrow. You should get some sleep soon."

He nodded. "I know. I..."

Sephiroth shook his head. "I'm not worried about you. But I had to hire a guide to the Mako Reactor. I've heard she's young, so I hope we can rely on her." But he looked back out the window, more towards the north. "So strange. I really don't know anything about this place. It's like it's been hidden from me, this entire time."

"There hasn't really been anything to know," Cloud said, and walked into the inn room. He stopped, seeing one body spread-eagled across one of the beds, and paused. There were three beds. And four of them. "We're short a bed."

Sephiroth came in behind him, frowned and shut the door. "Hnn. We'll make do."

Cloud looked to the other trooper, then up at Sephiroth. "Should I--I don't think I should--inappropriate, isn't it? Superior officers. And troopers."

There was almost a smile on the pale lips. "No. You have a point, even incoherent like that. Still... he is already asleep."

Cloud lowered his voice. "But we've been so careful so far. What if he--I don't want you--"

"Sadly, another good point." Sephiroth raised one hand, rubbed at his temples. "Gods, the Mako smell... It's even inside the buildlings. Hopefully, that's all that's inside the buildings. Right..." A deep breath, and then, "You and Zack sharing a bed won't seem as conspicuous, especially considering you're from the same squadron, and roommates besides. That in itself should stop that idiot from prying. And Zack has been hovering over you constantly, so if he thinks anything, it will only be what's false." But Sephiroth looked down at him, and Cloud could see that the other man disliked it as much as he did. Cloud glanced across the room, at the door, then tilted up, leaned up as much as he could. Sephiroth did lean down to meet him, and though it was short, Cloud convinced himself it was better than nothing.

He was tired enough to fall asleep quickly, but his sleep was not a deep one. He stirred when he felt Zack getting into bed alongside him, and as he shifted, and turned onto his other side, to look at the bed closest to the windows, he thought he saw a pair of jade eyes, watching him. He had to shut his own eyes, curl up more tightly, and only loosened again when he felt Zack's arms come around him.

***

Tifa.

Gods. She had only gotten prettier.

He watched her from behind his visor, as she paced in front of the reactor, talking out loud, to him, to herself, to the mountain, mostly indignant that she wasn't allowed in when she had led them so far, and gods, what was taking them so long anyway?

He didn't answer any questions, didn't stop her or attempt to speak to her at all. His voice would be useless, and he couldn't think of anything to say. Besides that, he could hear a snide voice in the back of his head, commenting that it was about time that she didn't get everything she wanted. He hated that voice, tried to snuff it out, tried to think that he was just as curious as she was. But at least he had Zack, and he had Sephiroth. He would have something explained to him, he was sure. She would be left in the dark, and it was because of Shinra protocol. That was all.

Still, just watching her, he wondered at his own lack of feeling. He had expected so much if he saw her again. He wondered if it was because he had the safety of his Shinra helmet, the visor and the cloth mask that protected so much of his face and all of his identity. He wondered if it would be different if he removed the mask, took off the helmet. He wondered, but he knew it didn't matter, because he would never do that.

He wasn't scared of her. He just... didn't feel anything. She was very pretty, certainly, but--his mind only kept going back to Sephiroth. And Zack. And wondering what was going on inside. He hoped nothing bad had happened. He hoped they hadn't been ambushed. He hoped he and Tifa weren't ambushed--gods help him if they got attacked and all he had was the machine gun. Not even Zack could cut down these monsters on his own.

Tifa turned and looked at him, arms akimbo, about to say something, but suddenly gasped and looked up. He whirled, machine gun raised and aimed at the top of the reactor stairs, just to see Sephiroth and Zack emerge. He stepped back out of the way as they descended; Sephiroth looked different. He wasn't sure how, but he didn't get a good look at the Commander's face before he started back down the path they had come. Tifa looked confused and then hurried after, and Zack only glanced down at Cloud before going on. Cloud caught up with Zack and knew better than to ask, but couldn't help but notice that Zack looked worried as well.

When they reached Nibelheim, they found the mayor waiting. Sephiroth gave Tifa the gil they had agreed upon, and told the mayor about the bridge, and said that the amount of monsters should die down and they would remain a few extra days to help exterminate the ones that remained. Then he went straight into the inn, leaving everyone else behind.

Zack found both the mayor and Tifa staring at him as if seeking explanation, but all he did was shrug, grin, said it was always a pleasure, and headed off to the inn with a whistle. Cloud went after him, but when they entered the inn they saw the innkeeper looking up the stairs as if confused. Zack excused himself and stepped around the old man; Cloud did the same and together, they went up.

Cloud expected to find Sephiroth in the inn room already taking out a sheet of paper from their supplies to get to work on their report. He expected that the Commander would appear concerned. He expected that Zack would give him some kind of warning about the man's mood, or what had happened in the reactor.

He didn't expect Sephiroth to turn from the windows and snarl at them to leave him alone. It was a quiet snarl, but the rage in it was enough to shock Cloud into staggering back out of the room. Zack closed the door and cursed under his breath. Cloud looked to him with confusion, tore off his helmet and pleaded Zack's name.

Zack looked at him, and all he could say at first, shoulders sagging and brow furrowing, was, "Jenova."

***

"The man's not stupid," Zack said, biting into his slice from the loaf of bread and grimacing around the food in his mouth. "He knows when he's been lied to, and he was--gods. I mean, you should have seen it. Whatever the hell Jenova is, it's got its own door. Name spelled out right over it, pipes leading to it. And the Mako chambers. Hell, Cloud, I've been in something that looked exactly like it. And damned if Sephiroth hasn't, probably more than anyone except whatever damned unlucky sons of bitches were stuck in them in the first place."

They had ordered food from the innkeeper, but Zack knew better than to talk to Cloud about what had happened right there in the inn room. They took their food outside, and went out behind the inn, to the small run-down garden. Sitting there on the dead grass with their meager rations to themselves, Cloud told Zack he had thought it strange that Sephiroth had only caught him when the bridge had broken and they had fallen. He had just let the other trooper go; he hadn't just not bothered to look for him, but hadn't bothered trying to save him, when he had reached down and pulled Cloud to safety. He could have helped the other trooper. Cloud was sure of it.

Zack shook his head. "I don't know. Whatever's going on, it's made him more paranoid. Maybe he thought it was best not to ever have to worry about that trooper being a mole ever again. Hell. But that was even before the reactor, so."

Cloud ate his own bread and curled up, shoulders hunched. "I... What should we do?"

"Not much of a damned thing we can do, right now," Zack breathed. "We can't get in touch with the Shinra just yet. Sephiroth already had with the inn's radio, I know. The driver won't show up again for at least a week. I don't know what the hell is going on in his head, but. A week? The hell?"

"Can't we try talking to him again?" Cloud said softly. "Can't we? I mean. There's nothing else we can do, right? He's got to talk to us."

Zack nodded. "Just worried about trying it again just now, after he just told us to get out an hour ago. Hell, maybe he's trying to sleep it off."

He doubted that; they both did, and they both knew it. They finished up their food and Zack thought it might be best to try to take some up to Sephiroth. It wasn't quite a peace offering, but any man operated better once he had some food in him, Zack said, and Cloud quietly agreed. They went up to the room with a tray of the inn's food, knocked on the door. They got no answer, but found the door unlocked. It swung open. Sephiroth was nowhere inside.

"Fuck," Zack breathed.

***

"When the hell did he leave? When the hell did he fuckin leave?" Zack muttered, as they went back down the stairs and outside the inn. They looked about the circle, but there was no sign, and when Zack asked one of the townspeople, he only just shook his head. Zack thanked the man, then looked around, but there was nothing, no way to know where Sephiroth had gone, or what he might be up to.

"Shit. The reactor?" Zack looked back up to the mountain. "I ought to remember the way back up on my own--"

"Zack, no," Cloud said, dragging him aside. "Not alone. It's too dangerous--the monsters, and it's going to be late again soon, and they just get that much worse at night, you know that--"

"All right, all right," Zack said, "I'll only go up for a bit, and as soon as it gets dark I'll be back, and you'll be in the inn probably getting snogged by Sephiroth, all right?"

Cloud blinked, felt his face turning red beneath the visor and the cloth. "Zack--"

"Hey, better that than anything crazy," Zack said, and smiled at him to show he didn't mean it harshly at all. "You know, it's just--I don't think I've ever seen him like this. I've seen him mad, I've seen him angry, but he's always let someone know--you or me or something--when something like this happens, right?"

Cloud hesitated. "Has he, though?"

"...shit. Right." He shook his head, looked back up to the mountains. "I'll be back. All right? Don't worry." And he was off.

***

It was nerve-wracking, being left alone. Facing Nibelheim was hard enough with Zack and Sephiroth with him. Facing the town without anyone there was worse, and Cloud couldn't bring himself to trouble his mom with any questions about the Commander's whereabouts.

"Bad for Shinra PR," he muttered, and walked around the town hoping for some sign of Sephiroth. He pretended to be performing a routine patrol, but that wouldn't explain him looking into the nearby graveyard, or wandering about the back alleys as much as he did. Still, no one stopped him, no one said anything. Of course, they wouldn't bother a grunt. He was glad for it.

***

Night fell fast. Zack came back as he had promised, but he didn't find Cloud being snogged by Sephiroth in the inn, only a worried Cloud waiting for him beside the water tower. Zack only shook his head, and Cloud told him to go on ahead. He'd stay up a bit longer, and keep looking until the cold drove him in. Zack wanted to argue, but Cloud shook his head and Zack knew better than to push the issue. He went back to the inn, and left Cloud to keep up his patrol.

It was as some of the lights in the houses went out that Cloud noticed something odd. He caught a gleam out of the corner of his eye. He looked back and noticed that there was a small light in one of the delapidated mansion's windows. He hurried to the gate, remembered that it had always been locked when he was little. The boys had always found ways to lock someone else inside anyway, when he was younger, but now there was no lock. It lay, rusted and broken, on the stone at his feet. He pushed gently on the gate. It shuddered, shrieked and moved just enough for him to slip through.

Cloud walked slowly up the path to the front door. It, too, had been broken into, the lock lying on the front step. The strange thing was that this lock looked as though it had been there for much longer than the other; in fact, it looked as though it had been nudged aside, because there was a small patch of stone faded a different shade than the rest, just to its side. He looked up at the door, took a deep breath and pushed it open. It came open without a problem, and he listened.

It was odd, just how strong the fears from his days as a boy remained. There were lurkers in the shadows, whispers hovering among the dust motes in the air. Just one breath had him coughing, and disturbing more dust, but then he heard a plank creak, a foot step on the old wooden floor.

He looked up. There on the upper floor, candle in hand, was the Commander, staring down at him.

"Cloud...?" The shadows leapt about the older man's face so he couldn't make out his expression clearly, only the cold gleam of green when the light caught his eyes just right.

"Sephiroth," he said, awkwardly shifting, and rubbing his arms. "It... It's getting late, and Zack and I have been worrying about you..."

"There's no need to worry," Sephiroth said, walking across the upper floor, one hand on the banister. "Nothing can kill me, after all."

Cloud watched as he started descending the stairs, each step measured, slow, deliberate. There was something wrong about all of it, the way Sephiroth walked, the way Sephiroth spoke, the way the meaning behind his words squirmed and slithered into something else. Cloud watched, and shook his head.

"It's not that--"

"Is it?" Sephiroth stood before him, now, candle passing into his right hand, held close to Cloud's face. "Where is he?"

"He's just gotten back," Cloud said. "He went into the mountains looking for you. I--I told him he should go on, back to the inn."

"It's like him, to go chasing after something when it's really right at his feet the entire time," Sephiroth murmured, his gaze elsewhere, his head tilted. Then the eyes narrowed, the head tilted to look more closely at Cloud. "Let him sleep, then. Don't go back to the inn to tell him about me just yet. He should rest."

"But he'll worry--" Cloud started, stopping when a black-gloved hand cupped his chin, a few fingers stroked his cheeks, and then Sephiroth's thumb roved over his lips.

"He'll sleep," Sephiroth said, and Cloud wasn't sure if it was meant to be reassurance or not. "I don't think I will. There's too much on my mind."

Cloud leaned into the man's gentle stroking without even realizing it, at first, until a long scratch up the nape of his neck nearly made him purr. He opened his eyes, tilted his own head back to look straight up at Sephiroth's face. Even in this kind of darkness, even not knowing the whole of things, he thought that Sephiroth looked perfect.

"I don't want to 'think,' now," Sephiroth whispered. "I don't want to hear everything right now. I just want to drown."

He didn't have to say anything more.

***

The master bedroom was up on the second floor. It was frightening, in such a hungry darkness with nothing but Sephiroth's candle to light his way. Sephiroth himself seemed to need little, but he remained tolerant of Cloud's stumbles, and led him along to the room.

It was somehow less dusty than the rest of the mansion, and even though Cloud could not see the dust, he was thankful that he couldn't feel so much of it on his skin, and was even more thankful that when Sephiroth peeled the first layer of sheets from the bed, the sheets beneath smelled clean.

It was as if the mansion's run-down look was fabricated. It was as if someone expected to come back at any time.

Touching Sephiroth that night and being touched by Sephiroth that night had never seemed so frightening before. The desire was still there. The pleasure was still there. But the pain, which had always been there, had never been so evident.

In the end, he lay naked in Sephiroth's embrace, the Commander still fully clothed, the black of his leather smearing even the surrounding darkness. Cloud turned away from the candle on the nightstand, turned closer to Sephiroth, and tried to curl up into the comforting black, felt the other man's whisper through his skin before he ever heard the words. He ached. The words were for a spell, and he shuddered before it was done, let out a low keen.

He fell asleep shortly after, and dreamed of nothing but dark green water.

***

He woke up in time to hear something rumble closed. The sound shook him, and he pushed himself up so quickly he pulled a muscle in his side. He clenched himself, grit his teeth at the momentary pain, and then realized that there was some light in the room now, thick and grey like mist, soaking in through the window. It faced the wrong direction to catch a mountain morning properly, but given the mist blocking his view, he doubted there would be much sun at all that day.

He eased himself out of the bed, and pulled on his clothes. He was still hopping on one foot and dragging his left boot on when he reached the hall. He thought the sound hadn't come from too far away, so, calling Sephiroth's name softly, he went back across the second floor's walkway over the main room, ignoring even the stained glass windows until he reached the other side. He followed the path cleared through the debris in the other rooms, noticing what was turned over and what had merely been shoved aside to reach the other doors.

He wondered what Sephiroth was searching for, what he thought he could find in this place. At least there had been no ghosts, not yet.

Then he reached a room, where the brick wall of a chimney--must have come from one of the lower floors--filled a corner of the room. He stared. The room was messy, but did not appear to have been gone through like the others.

Sephiroth wasn't there after all.

He padded through the rest of the building, calling Sephiroth's name, trying desperately to fight down the panic threatening to bubble up inside of him. He finally stopped in the main room in front of the door, shaking so badly he couldn't even manage to get the Commander's name past his lips one more time. Instead, he ran away.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

Someone must have seen him disappear into or emerge from the Shinra Mansion, because by the time he managed to wake Zack and drag him outside and then to the gate, they found several of the villagers standing outside the mansion walls, heads together, trying to peer into the windows for some glimpse of something, someone.

"The hell do they think they're doing?" Zack muttered, as they came up the steps and to the crowd. While Zack told the villagers to leave, that this had to do with official Shinra business, Cloud stared through the iron bars of the gate and at the mansion, growing fearful that he couldn't see any candlelight, anywhere--there was nothing to say that Sephiroth had even been there, save for his memory, and he hadn't even seen where the Commander had gone.

Then Zack was at his side, and shoved the gate open. The shriek of the iron against the stone was awful and caused some cursing among the villagers, but Zack ignored them and ran on ahead, Cloud hot on his heels. He had to force open the door; for some reason, it had gotten stuck closed, and wouldn't open even though the lock still lay on the front step. They stepped inside, and Zack looked to Cloud.

"All right, now where was it--"

"This way!" And Cloud ran to the stairs, started up them. Zack followed closely behind, and Cloud led him to the dead end room. Breathing heavily, he gestured. "This was it. He must have come into this room. I heard a noise here."

"You sure it came from here?" Zack said, with less doubt rather than determining Cloud's certainty. Cloud nodded, and Zack paused in the middle of the room, hands on his hips, tapping his foot. He paused, then shouted Sephiroth's name.

Nothing happened, but Zack listened, cocked his head. Cloud opened his mouth but Zack held up a hand, and shouted again. Nothing happened, but Zack went to the brick wall. Cloud stared as the First Class Soldier began tapping against it, listening, ear against the stone, before his hand drifted over something and--

The wall shook. Cloud heard the familiar rumbling and stared as a portion of the rock wall pulled back and moved aside, finally pulling to a shuddering stop. Cloud joined Zack at the new doorway, peering down into what seemed to be a spiral staircase, leading down... The only light came from some opening near the top of the shaft, and Zack shook his head.

"Cloud. Get our supplies from the inn."

Cloud looked to his friend, biting his lower lip. "But--"

"Just do it, all right?" Zack leaned out, looking downward, his Mako-enhanced vision able to make out more than Cloud ever would without additional light. "Shit, it looks like it goes down pretty far." Then he looked back to Cloud, put a hand on his shoulder. "Get our supplies from the inn. Bring it to one of the rooms here. I'll go down and speak to him first."

"But Zack--"

"Cloud," and Zack's voice grew quiet, and cold, and serious, "did you listen to me yesterday? When I told you what went on in the reactor?" Cloud nodded, and Zack kept his voice low, "He nearly sliced me in half, Cloud. He was't even directing his anger at me, but it was there, and you know he has Masamune with him. I think it would kill him to hurt you, but it would kill me if something happened to either of you, and I can't take that chance, okay? At least if he gets angry at me, I can patch myself up, and faster than you can. You've not seen him angry before, Cloud. Not like this."

"And you have?" The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them, but he found his fists clenched and he couldn't help it. Zack's surprise would have stopped him before, if this was back in Midgar and their circumstances were different, but he shook his head and shut his eyes. "It's not like I--so I wasn't at Wutai--I don't know--but I--don't act like I don't know anything about it."

"Cloud..." Zack put both hands on his shoulders, leaned his head closer to the visor, lowered his voice. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, all right? I'm just scared. Sweet Shiva, I'm scared. He's down there alone, someone has to go in after him, and I don't want to be alone but I'll be damned if something were to happen to you, even by accident--it would kill me, I'm sure as hell it would kill him. We can't afford to lose anything here, okay? Please?"

He pulled away, nodded, tried to blink back the wetness that he couldn't swipe away with his visor in place. Zack took a deep breath and thanked him before going through the doorway. Cloud followed him with his sight for as long as he could, and even then listened to the fading sound of Zack's footsteps, until he couldn't hear anything anymore. Then he pushed himself away, and mechanically went through the actions, going back outside, ignoring the querying looks of some of the villagers who had yet to leave the mansion's gate, and returning to the inn.

It took him a few trips to manage, and even then he was hardly aware of the time it took, or even what he was doing. He just knew that, by the time he carried the last of it into the mansion's guest bedroom, Zack was there, rummaging through their things until he found a ration bar. He unwrapped it and started gnawing it, and when Cloud looked up at him, he just shook his head.

"Not yet. Give me a moment, okay?"

Cloud set down the last of their bags with a quiet nod. He took off his helmet, and looked out one of the windows, to his mother's house.

***

Zack hadn't smoked in a long time, so when Cloud found him out behind the mansion later that day, smoking a cigarette he must have gotten from the general store, he knew just as well as Zack did what it meant. He said nothing of it, but waited. Zack told him then, everything, and at the end looked at Cloud and shook his head.

"He said it. Leave me alone. That's what he said. I tried--I fucking tried, but he won't--" Zack cut himself off, turned away in disgust and shuddered and cursed at the wind.

Cloud went back into the mansion. He roamed from room to room, not knowing where to go, what to do. He thought, if any of the villagers were watching, they might mistake him for a ghost, passing from room to room and window to window as he did.

***

The piano was in tune. Cloud found it only the third time he walked into the room, and pulled the protective sheet from off of it. He tried desperately to remember an old tune--he had had lessons, once, when he was very small. But he couldn't get his hands to remember, even though he could hum it so well.

Night fell and he forgot food, forgot all hunger. He wandered into the room with its secret entrance instead, and stared at the gaping maw of the darkness, leading down. He couldn't bring himself to scare Zack as well as himself. He would have to wait.

***

Night fell, and Zack eventually crawled onto one of the old beds and punched one of the pillows into submission and fell unconscious. Cloud stared at him from his own bed, watching, waiting, until he was certain Zack was asleep. Then he took the flashlight he had found among their supplies earlier that day during his wandering, and he grabbed his jacket and pulled on his boots.

He walked across the mansion until he reached the room. When he looked down, he noticed dim light at the very bottom of the stairwell, so far away it turned his stomach. But he held the flashlight close and started down the stairs, one hand on the wall. It was damp, but he ignored the moisture against his fingers, concentrated on breathing, on getting down one step at a time. At the bottom, the stairwell opened up into a long hall--a generous word for it, as it more closely resembled a tunnel--and he turned on the flashlight, disturbing a bunch of bats hanging from the ceiling. He immediately turned off the flashlight, swallowed, kept going forward. There must have been a door at the other end; he could see a slim band of light along the floor. He moved toward that, and it took him a moment when he reached the wooden door to find a handle. A hard pull managed to open the door, and once his eyes had adjusted to the light on the other side, he stood several moments just drinking it in.

It was a laboratory, and a library. Yellow lights from the ceiling or from the lamp in the middle of the room illuminated shelves empty of their books--stacks of them lying all over the place--a mess of contraptions and chemicals in one cupboard and some bizarre, massive capsule-like glass mechanisms toward the back of the room. The desk in the middle of the lab was covered with open books and notebooks, most filled with an illegible scrawl. But more importantly than that, given what Zack had told him, was the entrance that led to the rest of this underground chamber, the rest of the library.

He hesitated, then started for it. He paused at the end of the hall and peered down, to the larger desk at the other end, lit up by another lamp hanging from the ceiling.

"I thought Zack would never allow you down," said a voice from behind. Cloud startled, whirled about, but Sephiroth stood with a book in one hand, thumb jammed between the covers and thick pages to mark his place. He looked down at Cloud with that unreadable expression from before, and the darkness around his eyes came from the shadows, Cloud was certain--but they looked like real shadows, and the slight rasp in the Commander's voice came from hours and hours of reading with no water, no food.

"He--he doesn't know I'm here," Cloud said, pulling his jacket closer around himself. "I c-came alone."

"Did you?" Sephiroth murmured. "He must be asleep, then."

"Are... you hungry?"

"No." It was spoken without a thought, without any concern. Sephiroth stepped past Cloud and back toward the office, book still held in one hand. "I told you before. Nothing can kill me. Not even hunger."

Cloud followed more closely. "But you should--if you don't, you'll get--"

"I should do what I need to do," Sephiroth muttered, placing the book open on the desk. He did not turn to look at Cloud, and Cloud was silently thankful that he did not have to meet the other man's eyes again just yet. The more light in this portion of the library would make it too easy to see more of the other man's face, might help him to read more between the lines, but he couldn't bring himself to believe that it could be good for him to do so. "I meant it, what I said."

Cloud shook his head. "You'll die if you don't eat--"

"Nothing can kill me." And his voice was different, colder, as he turned and stared at Cloud with eyes that seemed to be glowing and alive with writhing green light. "Do I have to show you before you believe me?"

Before Cloud could stop him, he raised one hand. His dagger was there, though Cloud had not seen it on him, nor had he caught Sephiroth pulling it from a concealed sheath. When he lowered the blade, it was right across the back of his left hand--right across the long black number marking his skin there. Cloud winced, shuddered at the sight of Sephiroth's blood, and watched as the other man's hand--gloved--swept over the wound, wiping away the blood and revealing the unharmed skin. Untouched, save for the black number. There was no sign of anything. No sign of a cut, of healing.

Cloud raised his eyes to Sephiroth's, unable to speak. Sephiroth only nodded, and rammed the dagger point-down into the surface of the desk. It stood there, wavering, letting out a low ringing hum, and Cloud stared at it so hard that he failed to see the older man moving again, the marked left hand touching his face. The gesture brought his attention back to Sephiroth.

"Tell me," Sephiroth whispered, "do you love your mother?"

He swallowed, nodded. "She's--she's all that makes this place h-home."

"Home," Sephiroth echoed, and something in his eyes changed, then. His pupils constricted, and in the dim light of the library it did make him look different. More frightening. And impossibly angry. "I think you should leave me, for now." When Cloud started to shake his head, Sephiroth pulled away, drawing his glove out from behind his belt and pulling it back over his hand. "Don't. Just go."

***

Of course he couldn't just leave. Between Zack's growing agitation and anxiety, and the fact that Zack didn't know what to do, and Zack had always known how to deal with everything, especially when it had to do with some part of Sephiroth that Cloud couldn't understand, he couldn't bring himself to stay in any one place for too long. Unfortunately, it was all of Sephiroth that he couldn't understand, now. Every time he looked at Sephiroth, he felt as though he was looking through a window at something he couldn't touch, something he didn't belong to, something he couldn't understand. It was like and unlike the way it had been when he had just come to Midgar, and Zack had introduced them. Sephiroth had touched him, first. Sephiroth had told him through simple contact that he was allowed. The window had been opened up.

Whatever it was in the reactor--Jenova, or monsters in the Mako chambers, or the monsters in Sephiroth's own head that he had never really seen before--had slammed the window back down. Whatever it was in the basement that Sephiroth found in the books, it just jammed the window tighter.

Even with this new Sephiroth in view, however, he was still Sephiroth. Cloud couldn't just leave.

He spent his day in only a few ways, then. He went on a cursory patrol each morning and evening, circling the town's perimeter, all the streets that a normal trooper wouldn't think to check. But he knew better, and even if Zack and Sephiroth had repaired the reactor and that was supposed to lower the amount of monsters in the area, there were still the ones left from before the reactor was repaired. Twice he actually did hear something on the other side of Nibelheim's stone wall, and he thought it had to be Nibel wolves, come down from the mountains.

Zack saw him each time he went on his patrols and shook his head, thinking it futile or silly or gods only knew what, but he never tried to stop him, and Cloud never wanted to ask what Zack thought of it, because he knew that his friend didn't agree.

When he wasn't on patrol, sometimes he tried to find Zack. Zack spent those days in a few places. The first place was down in the basement of the Shinra Mansion, and Cloud always knew when that was because he couldn't find Zack elsewhere. After one time hearing raised voices down in the cavernous hallway he couldn't bring himself to intrude, or to ever look for Zack down there again. The second place was the guest bedroom, where Zack busied himself with random things, sometimes stuff he had found around the mansion. He took to wandering the halls and rooms often, mentioned to Cloud he thought he had found a couple of numbers scattered about and he wondered what they were there for. There was a safe in one of the rooms that threw his new materia into spasms, and so Zack left it well enough alone. The third place included the grounds behind the mansion, where Zack often did his exercises, or smoked, or just sat on the brown grass and frowned up at the black mountains. Then there was the fourth and final place he would find Zack, and that was back at the inn, talking to Zangan. Sometimes Zangan was with Zack behind the mansion, and they seemed to get along well enough. Cloud left them alone, as well. His hand-to-hand skills couldn't hold a candle to theirs, and he felt disjointed enough without that.

When he did find Zack, sometimes they talked. Sometimes they were silent. Sometimes they tried to talk about what was happening around them, what was going on in the basement. Other times they were both too exhausted or frightened to speak.

He practiced, too. There was a large metal stick that might have been a real blade at some point, that he had found out behind the mansion in the decaying remains of the garden. Once he cleaned it off, he found it didn't have a handle anymore and the blade was too blunt to actually damage anything. But it had the weight of a real sword, and the light curve of a katana. It wasn't Zack's Buster Sword, but it was enough for him to handle.

He showered. After the first time they had run water five minutes straight waiting for the rust and brown to flow out, they found the plumbing actually worked quite well. So there was that, even if the rest of the bathroom wasn't much to look at it. Actually, he tried to avoid looking at it at all.

He didn't visit his mother. Not yet, he thought. Not yet.

The rest of his time, he spent down in the basement, watching as Sephiroth read every book. The man's reading speed was phenomenal; even though it had been several days, it would have taken any normal person a year to read through all of the material in the library, if he or she had uninterrupted time and the capacity for all of that information to come into one's mind.

He knew Sephiroth knew he was there, though he stayed out of the way. Normally he crouched down or sat against the desk in the laboratory, looking down the hallway and into the library, watching as Sephiroth went. Cloud knew things were becoming worse because Sephiroth left the books in piles, and the piles were becoming progressively messier. Sephiroth was never so inconsistent. And he had never displayed an open carelessness for books. They always went back into place, just so.

He only watched. He never said anything. He knew the man did stop, from time to time, to relieve himself, to clean up in one of the other bathrooms, perhaps even to grab a ration bar or something to drink. When he did speak, either reading aloud or just muttering something to himself, his voice sounded less dry. Instead, it sounded much less... something. There was something wrong with all of it. The way he laughed. It had changed.

Normally, that was all. Occasionally, it went differently. He would enter the laboratory. He would find Sephiroth, wherever he was, though he wouldn't bother him. He would start to sit down. Then Sephiroth would stop him, more often than not without any words. He would turn Cloud around so Cloud faced him, and would simply stare at him. His fingers touched Cloud's face with something akin to desperation, though he didn't think Sephiroth was capable of being desperate. When he kissed him, it was as if he needed every breath of air Cloud was capable of offering. When he bit him, it was is if he had to see the way Cloud's skin reacted, as if he had to remind himself what it was like. When he fucked him, it was still more than the simple act, but gods help him, Cloud didn't know what it meant anymore. There was meaning there. He knew it, he could feel it, he could even hear it in the way that Sephiroth didn't quite breathe his name as he thrust into him. But Cloud didn't know, and more than once afterward he found himself in tears, feeling close to broken, because he couldn't understand.

Zack knew. He knew Zack knew, and he knew that even if Zack hadn't heard them, he had to be able to see it in the way Cloud moved, and how he hid his face and body for hours afterward. The night after the third time it happened, Zack got into bed with him just to hold him.

***

"You should go see her," Sephiroth said suddenly. He looked to Cloud as he closed it, the last book. He tossed it aside, not caring where it landed, and his eyes remained concentrated on the curled pale body beside the desk.

Cloud pulled his knees closer, unable to speak. He had spent the last two hours crying, silently, the kind without sobs, the kind that ripped his lungs into shreds and left his eyes red and sore.

"You should," Sephiroth insisted. "She's important to you. We'll be leaving soon."

Cloud licked his lips, tasted salt and blood. He tried to work more moisture into his throat. "Soon?" he asked.

"Soon." Sephiroth came to his side, knelt down and raised a black gloved hand to Cloud's cheek. "There's nothing left here."

"Did you find it?"

"Hmm..." A considering sound, as the head tilted, and the green eyes peered so sharply into his own he wondered if he could see his thoughts. As scattered as they were, Cloud almost wished Sephiroth could, just to interpret them for him. "You'll see."

"I will?" Gods, even in his own ears, he sounded so young.

The smile that answered him was small. The slight curl to the lips and the gleam in his eyes were both so predatorial, Cloud tilted his head back, giving his neck up in offering. The offering was taken, but in a different way, a nip at the crook of his neck, a kiss at his throat, and then the smile pressed and cut into his lips, past his defenses, right into him.

A cold hand helped him to his feet. There was less assistance with his clothes, but even as sore as he felt he did not let himself be given anymore help than he absolutely needed.

When he left the library, he looked over his shoulder. Sephiroth stood in the laboratory, watching him, before turning and walking back down the library. Cloud whispered that he'd be back soon, and slowly made his way back out.

***

He washed up a little before he went to see his mother. He knew that Zack saw him leave, but he couldn't bring himself to say anything, to himself, to Zack. He only pulled on a cleaner uniform, lifted his helmet to his head and pulled the mask up over his mouth and nose, and left.

The sunset couldn't be seen with the dark clouds rolling overhead. There would be rain, he thought, but the clouds hadn't moved in quite enough and there was no thunder yet. It was already so dark that the small town's lamps had been lit.

He knocked on the door. His mother let him in, and as soon as the door had closed he pulled off the helmet. She asked him what was wrong, brushed some of his hair away from his forehead, and he only stared at her, unable to say what he should have said. He felt so shaken that he couldn't answer. She dragged him into the kitchen, sat him down at the table, and had just put a glass of water in front of him when the first scream brought them both to their feet, his chair falling back against the floor. It was followed by more shouts, yelling, and Cloud looked to his mother, shaking his head.

He ran. He snatched up his helmet on the way out, and had just gotten out the door when the explosion took his house and his mother, erupting into flames and smoke and ash. The force of the blast sent him sprawling, but he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, turned around to stare at what was left of his house. He struggled onto his feet, stared into the flames.

The stench of ash and flame and burning flesh filled his mouth, nose, lungs. He coughed, tears blurring his vision, as he turned, only one name on his lips, but it died when he saw the black and silver within hands' reach.

Sephiroth glared down at him, expression inscrutable. "You would do anything for her, wouldn't you?" he asked. "I'm doing the same for mine. She's waiting for me." He turned, Masamune gleaming in one long curve in his left hand, bloodied. "Stay out of my way."

"Sephiroth--"

He ran, Sephiroth had only taken a few strides away, and some part of Cloud's mind found it logical that he was too close for Sephiroth to use Masamune effectively against him, but it didn't matter. The blade flashed in the red glow of the flames but it was the hilt that slammed against the side of his helmet.

He landed on his back in front of his burning house. He stared at the burning roof and the smoke climbing higher and higher above it, writhing, before the blackness consumed his vision and his consciousness.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

"Cloud, Cloud--"

He heard the voice, shouting his name. It seemed so far away, but he couldn't remember who it belonged to. Someone he knew? Everything was still dark, but he remembered, with sudden clarity, the image of Sephiroth walking into the flames--

"Sephiroth..." And it was the only word that managed to work past his lips before he fell unconscious again.

When he stirred, the fire was still raging and there was someone else at his shoulder, looking down at him with concern. His mind came back as slowly as his vision; everything focused around that concerned gaze until he could finally see everything wholly again, until he could finally feel every ache in his body, and realization came crashing into him like the Buster Sword hammering into his ribcage.

He jolted up, nearly hitting Zangan on the head.

"You all right, boy?" Zangan asked. "I've tried the houses--your friend's already gone--he went after that lunatic--wait! What are you--!"

But Cloud didn't hear the rest of it. He was up on his feet and running, the sound of flames, the sound of his blood and his heart, all of it drumming in his ears like thunder. He ran past the Shinra Mansion, untouched and apathetic to the burning of the village beneath it, and he ran past the final signpost and then through the wall's northern gate, onto the mountain paths.

A wolf growled at him as he passed, but he was never attacked. He knew the monsters were there--he could feel the mountain practically seething around him. But from the dead dragon carcass he passed on the way, and the red glow lighting up the mountainsides, all of the creatures living in its caverns and near the paths had to know what was happening. They had to know to stay away.

He stumbled, once, and fell, but he picked himself up and kept running without even realizing just how tired he was, just how much he felt of anything at all. He reached the reactor, and climbed down the chains to the catwalk that led inside the reactor proper. He saw Tifa's father but ran past the corpse. He charged instead into the glowing red room with the egg-like Mako chambers, saw Tifa bleeding, lying on the floor, looked up and saw Zack on top of one of the Mako chambers, body completely lax save for his face, twitching with pain. There was an indention in one of the metal rafters directly above the chamber; Cloud was able to piece together what had happened. Only one other man could have done that to Zack.

The Buster Sword had fallen beside the Mako chamber. Cloud took it, and ran up the stairs, to the door above which was the sign that spelled the name of Sephiroth's mother: J-E-N-O-V-A.

Jenova's chamber was cold and blue. That was all he noticed, first, save for the black-clad man standing in front of the glass tank high above the entrance.

He didn't think. He already knew without having to see that that Sephiroth, hand raised stroking the surface of the glass, was not the Sephiroth he had known. So he ran.

Sephiroth heard him as he charged. He turned, just in time to see the small trooper wielding Zack's massive Buster Sword, plunging it forward. The angle was awkward, and his wrists too weak, but it still found its mark.

The glowing green eyes widened. Cloud stared up at his idol, his Commander, his lover, saw the stark realization in his eyes. Words came from Cloud's lips but he was hardly conscious of speaking them, only knew he was whispering those things that had mattered to him before. They were gone now. And the rage and hatred and the sheer lust that filled those green eyes said it like nothing else. He had lost Sephiroth as well.

He pulled the Buster Sword free. His hands shook as he backed away, as the black-clad warrior slumped back against the tank, one arm covering the wound, the blade of Masamune quivering in his one-handed grip. Cloud stepped down to the very bottom of the chamber, tore off his helmet to breathe. His own breath rattled, and then he remembered the other casualties. He put the Buster Sword to his back and ran back outside, thoughts scattered.

He found Tifa lying still at the bottom of the stairs. Zack had shifted; his chest heaved. He was still alive. Cloud went to Tifa's side, then, pulled her over onto her back, saw she was still breathing. Her chest had taken a terrible cut but she seemed to be alive as well--her eyes opened as he lifted her in his arms, carried her away from the steps and set her down to lean her back against one of the Mako capsules.

She spoke his name like they were in a dream. She even mentioned that promise they had made beneath the stars--that promise. He had been late again; he was always too late to save her.

"Just... like you..."

He would know that voice even after the world ended. He looked up, saw Sephiroth enter the room, one hand holding the dripping, bleeding, smiling head of Jenova by the cables and hair. The other still held Masamune. Sephiroth stared down at him, blood flecked on his lips, and began to descend the stairs, one step at a time. Cloud couldn't move, could only stare in shock, but even once Sephiroth stepped through the doorway, Zack shifted again on top of the Mako chamber.

"Cloud," he gasped, blue-grey eyes staring at him with nothing but desperation and apology, "you have to--hnngh--" He shook, but forced the last word out, "--kill him..."

***

Pain couldn't accurately describe how his body felt when Masamune slammed through him. It drove into him, pierced his rib cage, and exited. He instantly lost all feeling past his abdomen; the force of the blow flung his head back. When he was lifted from the ground he slumped forward, and his eyes followed the length of metal run through his body, to the single hand that held him now several feet above the catwalk, to the long black arm to the shoulder to the bared neck to the eyes and pale hair that surrounded that face.

"Don't push your luck..." And there was pain in that voice as well.

He couldn't say anything, though his lips moved. He wasn't entirely aware of what he did, only watched his hands rise to the sword. The blade cut straight through his gloves and into his palms and fingers; he leaned down as if embracing it, and felt nothing when his feet touched down against the metal catwalk. He whispered Sephiroth's name. He saw the tears falling from his cheeks against his hands, against the blade, before he looked up and saw the disbelief filling the monster's face.

"Impossible...!"

It wasn't strength that moved his hands then. It was sorrow.

Zack had given him his last order. When he watched the black-clad form fall into the endless green below, he cried, blood and tears falling from hands and face, his heart literally broken, before he collapsed to the catwalk. He didn't have the strength to pull himself over the edge. He didn't have the strength to fall where he should have followed what was left of the man he had once known.

***

He was too small to reach them. He strained, pushing himself up onto his toes, and reached with his fingers, but his mother had put them just out of reach. He fell back onto his feet and stared up at the kitchen counter. The chocolate chip cookies were there. He could smell them, could smell their warmth in the cold of their small house, could smell the melty chocolate inside of them. He licked his lips, tasted blood, ignored it.

"Cloud?" There she was. She came in from the garden, wiping her hands on her apron. He grinned at her and ran to her, burying his face in her apron. She laughed, lifted him in her arms, kissed him on the cheek and walked over to the counter. "This is what you wanted? They're too hot yet. They'll burn you if you touch them. You have to let them cool. But that's the best thing about this place--" And she turned on her feet, a simple pirhouette, laughing. "It's so cold here, they'll be ready soon."

It was cold. He shivered and pulled himself closer to her warmth, as much as he could. She held him closer.

"It's all right, you know," she said, and when he pulled back to look at her, he looked down into her eyes, and her skin and dress came away as char onto the front of his uniform. She turned away, hiding the side of her face that now hung in patches of charred skin, and her body shook. "I'll always be your mother."

Then she looked at him, and one half of her face sneered, one red eye gleaming and her skin blue and cold, the other half still her own, the blue eye filled with wetness, before she raised one clawed hand and jabbed a syringe through his chest.

***

He screamed himself awake. There were bright lights and shadows all around him. He thought he could hear something shrieking that was not his own voice, but maybe it was--he saw a familiar dark gaze on him and his fear pitched his body into convulsions. Hands grabbed at him, pulled him out, forced him down. Voices spoke in eerily conversational tones. He wanted to claw at them, but when he first saw his hands he could see clean through the cuts in the pads of his fingers and palms to the bone and he only then noticed the chill plunged into his chest, the vice-like contraption working around his heart, pumping his blood through itself, and he fell back to the metal table top crying. It was a nightmare, it was a bad dream, he wanted out. He wanted his mother, he wanted Zack, he wanted anything but this. Cold metal clamped around his limbs to hold him in place and he heard instruments being prepared, and all he could do was sob as they jabbed tubes into his arms and then another down his throat.

He had killed all that had been left of Sephiroth, so maybe he was in hell after all.

***

"Beautiful, aren't they?" Sephiroth said, tilting his head back. The spring evening air in the mountains wasn't much better than winter, but they stood still out in the garden of the resort in their yukata. He leaned against the other man and felt Sephiroth's strong arm come around him, hand closing about his shoulder with gentle strength. Caring strength. The Commander did feel something for him, after all. He knew it.

He looked up at the stars, too, and nodded. The night sky was so clear away from Midgar.

"Hmm." Sephiroth pulled him to stand in front of him, draped both his arms around Cloud. His left hand, the one with the long black mark, rested over Cloud's heart. "You like them, don't you?" He nodded again. The other hand cupped his chin, tilted his head back while Sephiroth looked down at him. He smiled. "One of these days, I'll catch one for you." The lips touched his own, and he gave himself up freely, even when the fingers resting over his heart started pushing straight through his skin and through his bones to his heart--

***

The doctor tried to put a needle through his hand. It wasn't like the other needles. This one was connected to ink. He screamed and flailed.

It would later be filed that Specimen B of the Sephiroth Clone project, codenamed C, had struck out in a show of record reflexes, breaking his previous record, and simultaneously breaking the jawbone of a member of the Shinra Science Department, who, for the purpose of security reasons, would remain anonymous. The needle of ink that would be used to tattoo a number into Code C's left hand had been driven through the doctor's chest and the ink injected directly into his circulatory system.

Punishment for Code C was considered, but given the mental status of the specimen at that time, it was decided that punishment would do it no good. Instead, more intensive sessions under the guidance of Professor Hojo were scheduled to commence reprogramming of the specimen's brainwaves.

***

He woke up wretching. Somebody held him up, supported his head with a sweaty hand against his forehead as he coughed up the last of it. It smelled of bile and blood and glistened darkly in the corner of the cell as the somebody pulled him away from it. They collapsed in a heap on the floor in the corner, and he realized he knew whose arms it was holding him against the other's body.

He could feel his toes again. He couldn't remember the last time that he could. He wiggled his big toe just because he could, and even laughed. He heard a voice whisper his name in worry, but he turned, said, "Toes", and looked down to wiggle them again. He couldn't remember the last time he had had feet. Had he ever? Gods.

"Cloud," said the voice again, and he stopped laughing. He looked up, and his gaze met the blue-grey, with that ring of unearthly green about the black of the pupil, and he stared and he stared.

"Zack?" he asked, and the other nodded. His throat closed up and he coughed out a sob. He tilted his head forward and rested it against the other's chest. Zack held him closer and couldn't bring himself to say anything; Cloud could feel the tension in the other man's lungs. That he could know that kind of thing frightened him; that he could hear every drip of water and the running water in the pipes running throughout the basement's walls terrified him; that he could feel Zack's blood pulsing beneath his flesh would drive him insane, if he couldn't think of a way to distract himself.

So he bit his left hand.

His teeth clamped down hard enough to make himself bleed, and Zack cursed and dragged his hand from his mouth, told him he couldn't do that, what was wrong, he shouldn't hurt himself, was he all right. He couldn't understand half the words coming out of Zack's mouth, only heard the concern and the fear and beneath it all an undercurrent of anger. But Cloud couldn't understand it at all, and only shook his head. Why was Zack so worried? He was fine, after all. He could move his toes again.

***

It was the first time he was conscious when they threw him into one of the chambers. The Mako climbed up around him and he cried, threw himself against the glass, clawed at it until he lost a nail and he left bloody smears. The Mako climbed up over his head and he thought he would drown, held his breath for as long as he could, but the pain bit into his bleeding nails and finally it was too much. He cried out to breathe in and the Mako rushed inside of him. Wandering spirits sought out his body and pushed themselves into every space inside of him.

His brain leaped. He thought he saw Sephiroth smiling at him and he thought he saw a giant black orb filling the sky, eating the sun, drowning everything in the dark, and then he thought he saw Zack running at him and shouting at him to get down and then he thought he saw a girl with brown hair smiling at him and what was her name? He didn't know, or couldn't remember.

Then he thought he saw a headless body floating alongside him and it raised its arms to embrace him and he screamed again and tried to run away but it wrapped him up in its arms and the nails of one hand dug into his left arm.

Then he blinked and realized there was a tube in his arm that had never been there before. And he heard a voice somewhere outside the Mako chamber say "Sephiroth." He smiled and said the name, too, before the spirits that had climbed inside of him all screamed at once and he couldn't take it, and beat himself against the glass to knock himself out.

***

He woke up normally, for once, for the first time in a long time, meaning that he couldn't remember when exactly was the last time.

He found himself being embraced and for once it was by something other than that frightening blue headless thing or the monster that was half his mother or the memory of a dead man who he still loved. He thought he loved. He was pretty sure he loved him still.

But this was someone else, and this was not any one of those other things. He was not in a tank of glowing green burning fluid, and he was not laid out on a metal table to be cut open or injected into or pulled apart or pieced together again. He felt fairly together, and at least he could feel the burning ache in all of the different parts of his body to know that every body part was accounted for.

Wasn't there a time he had been happy just to have his feet again? Odd. He couldn't remember not ever having them.

It made him worry, enough so he bit his lower lip. The body lying alongside his, holding him in a loose embrace, finally stirred. Zack opened his eyes and looked down at him. He spoke his name, questioningly.

"Zack?" Cloud answered, and something like a smile turned Zack's lips, though it was too uncertain and too afraid to be a real smile.

"You remember me this time?" Zack asked, and Cloud nodded.

"Had I ever forgotten you?"

Zack looked at him, raised one hand to touch Cloud's forehead, and brushed his hair away from his face. "Yeah. But not this time?"

"This time." Cloud repeated the words, and said them again just for the satisfaction of hearing them come off his tongue. Then he licked his dry lips, and looked around. They were in a dark cell that seemed familiar to him, though he didn't know why. "Where are we?"

"We're underneath the Shinra Mansion," Zack answered. "Near the lab and library. Remember those? Remember the Shinra Mansion?"

"The piano was in tune," Cloud said, his eyes still roving. Finally they returned to Zack, and he nodded. "So why are we here?"

"I don't know." And Zack's arms came tighter around him, pulling him closer to Zack's own body. "I don't see why they're--we shouldn't be here. Gods only know how we're still alive to begin with. But we're--you--they've been doing these things, Cloud, and half the time I don't even know if you're you anymore or--" He cut himself off with a curse, pulled Cloud so tight against him that Cloud gasped in momentary pain, but it was Zack's face in the crook of his neck and shoulder, and the wetness of Zack's tears against his skin. "Don't you dare fucking leave me again, Cloud--don't you dare. Last time I thought you had, for good, you couldn't even do anything but stare--your eyes, Cloud, gods, they're so much like--and he's gone, he's gone, and you're almost gone, and I don't even know if I'm all here anymore either, maybe we're all going to go mad like he did, damned if I even care anymore--"

"Zack." And Cloud's voice trembled, enough so Zack pulled back just enough to look down at his younger friend's face. Cloud shook his head, his brow tightening and his mouth twisting in fright. "Zack, I don't understand what you mean."

"Sweet Shiva--" Zack didn't say anything else, drew in a ragged breath and just held Cloud to himself, and Cloud shifted to get more comfortable, though it was hard. The air was cold and there was nothing but stone under them. He realized he was naked, and Zack too, and he remembered what it had been like the few times they had had to use the communal showers on the campus before, and he couldn't help but think how nice it would be to have a hot shower.

He murmured nonsensically and after a few more minutes, curled up as they were in their corner, he felt just warm enough to become sleepy again. Zack murmured something back, and the words sounded a lot like "Don't leave me," and he said something that sounded a lot like "I love you" back, and he didn't think it was treason. He didn't even think Sephiroth would mind, given the circumstances.

He blinked, thought for a moment. He couldn't remember. "Zack?" he asked, and his friend grunted. "Zack, where's Seph?"

The sound Zack made in answer was both a laugh and a sharp cry. Cloud only knew that he had hurt Zack, somehow, and couldn't quite figure it out, but he knew what else it meant. Sephiroth wasn't there. He must be away on a mission. But why was Zack so sad? After all, if either of them should be sad about Sephiroth being away on a mission, it would be him--

"You don't even remember, do you?" Zack said suddenly, hands on Cloud's shoulders, shaking him from his thoughts and forcing him to look up at Zack. "They say you did it, Cloud. They say you managed to kill him. He's gone, Cloud. He's dead. Sephiroth is dead."

***

Professor Hojo filed another report to the executive board in late December the year following the Nibelheim incident. The report claimed numerous special properties were being discovered regarding Jenova's cells that had not ever been seen before, even during the experiments involving the original specimen and the second specimen. It reported positively for the opportunities this would present the Shinra if the professor was given a higher budget in the upcoming year with which to perform more experiments. Particularly, he wished to focus on Specimen B, Code C of the project, the boy who had somehow managed to perform the impossible.

After all, what better replacement for the The Great Sephiroth other than the only one who had managed to kill him?

In reality, as all the Turks knew and the Vice President of the Company also knew as he discussed it with them afterwards, most of the report was complete and utter bullshit. The majority of the experiments so far had only seemed to test just how much torture Hojo could put Code C through in revenge for killing Hojo's favorite experimental toy. He had had his favorite taken away from him. Of course he wanted revenge, and a replacement.

Still, Rufus looked at the photographs taken of Code C in various states of consciousness, often naked, often curled up in the corner of whatever room he was in at the time, and he felt something. He wasn't certain if it was pity, per se, though he had the suspicion that there was some of that.

Of course after that, there was the acknowledgement that with the advanced treatments of Mako and Jenova cells, Cloud Strife had only become more perfect after all.

"His eyes," Rufus muttered, setting aside a mug of the finest imported coffee the Corel mountains had to offer... before North Corel had been razed to the ground earlier that month, of course.

"His eyes?" Reno said, leaning across the Vice President's desk to see.

Rufus tilted his head, made a considering sound. "Gods. No wonder the Commander wanted him."

***

He was curled up in the corner of the laboratory again. The blood he tasted, for once, wasn't his own. He always knew his own now because it had an odd sweetness to it. And this was normal blood, hot and with a touch of metal.

Professor Hojo nudged the corpse with a toe. "This is the third one this week, Code C. If you keep killing my subordinates, they're going to cut my budget. And then what will I do? I'll have to terminate the project, and I can't have that." He frowned, pursed his ugly thin lips, and looked at Cloud. "I'll have to come up with some other method of controlling you."

"Don't take orders from you," Cloud whispered, and tasted more blood. He licked his lips. They were dry again. He was thirsty. "Not from the science department. SOLDIER doesn't take orders from the science department. Only Sephiroth."

"There's always that materia," Hojo continued, hands clasped behind his back, "the one that seems to allow one to influence the thoughts of another... perhaps something could be developed with that." He raised one hand, revealing the handgun, and pulled back the hammer. "Or perhaps I could just shoot him."

Cloud stopped. He didn't breathe, didn't shiver, didn't move, his gaze focused entirely on the handgun.

Hojo sneered. "That got your attention. Now be good, or else I will shoot him, enough times and with enough poison to actually kill him. Very slowly, of course. It wouldn't be worth it if he died too quickly. He's long proven unnecessary to the continuation of the project, you know. So you see, you're all that stands between him and a long, terribly unpleasant end. I recommend you listen to me." He leaned closer, well within Cloud's reach, and his sneer twisted into a smile that could almost be fatherly. "Be a good boy, and I'll have you taking orders from him again soon enough. All right?"

"...Sephiroth?" And it came out in a pleading whine.

Hojo patted him on the head. "Of course."


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very close character study of Cloud, beginning with his journey to Midgar to become a SOLDIER, to the horrors of the Nibelheim incident and beyond, with those tiny, wonderful slices of heaven inbetween. This is meant to fill in all those gaps, all those things we don't see in the game. Sephiroth x Cloud main. Explicit language, sex, and violence.

Shoved into the empty chamber, Cloud fell hard against the glass, shuddered against the cold air trapped inside with him as the glass door was closed. He fell to his knees quickly, and from there onto his side. The twin scars, one on his chest and the other on his back, had begun to bleed again.

At first, nothing was said. Then Cloud pushed his head off the metal grating of the Mako chamber's floor, and looked at Zack, who sat in the chamber not far from his own, watching him, face without expression. Cloud laid his head down, pillowed it on one hand.

"It hurts," he whispered.

"I know."

***

It finally happened, several years later. The executive board of the Shinra decided that the Sephiroth Clone project had proven too costly, not only in the cover-up expenses, but in the high death rate of workers involved with the project. The high results they expected to yield from the project had not been given to them. It was time for something to be done.

They cut Hojo's funding for the project extensively. Essentially, it would be non-existent. SOLDIER had managed to function without Sephiroth's leadership, and with Wutai effectively under the Shinra's heel and Avalanche and the other major resistance groups recently silenced in an all-out attack in the slums of Midgar, there was no need for another super soldier who would, more than likely, be so imbalanced as to be useless.

It was agreed to as an afterthought that the copy of Nibelheim would be left standing, and the employees hired to pretend to be the inhabitants of Nibelheim would continue their employ as such. The cover-up had been so extremely successful that the rest of the Planet had no idea that it had ever burnt down. The most any passer-by ever said about the new Nibelheim was that it was nice they had finally put down some form of pavement around the town circle.

Hojo appealed to the executive board for reconsideration. The President decided he would send his son to the site to view the progress Hojo had made, and make the decision then himself. He was a growing boy. He needed to learn to make important decisions.

Rufus sneered behind his father's back, and Reno snickered with him. But they went along with it.

***

It was less than a day after Rufus's visit and his refusal to reverse the executive board's decision that another report was filed and every Shinra base, no matter how small, was alerted to the break-out of two specimens, known only as Code Z and Code C, from the Nibelheim underground research facility. No one could understand how it could have happened that security was so low--the funding had been cut but would last through the end of the month, so where had all the troopers gone?--but it still stood that the Shinra had its biggest confidential liability on the loose.

No one could understand it. Rufus read through the report at the following executive meeting with a straight face, but afterward he went to his office, poured himself a glass of wine, and sat back to wait and hear the following reports from the Turks, all of which had been mobilized to hunt down the escapees.

The key to the locks of the Mako chambers beneath the Shinra Mansion lay on his desk. He thought he would keep it as a souvenir.

***

He woke to find Zack watching him, eyes wide. Cloud blinked his own.

"What?"

"You never hear yourself anymore, do you?" Zack asked. Cloud turned his eyes away, looking instead at their surroundings. A farm house, he thought, an old one, with the roof not so far away from their heads. He thought he could reach up and touch the wooden beams. He could smell wood and dirt; somewhere not so far away there was the heavy smell of cat piss. He wrinkled his nose, curled up more tightly in the old wool blanket about the two of them.

"You don't."

"I've been asleep," Cloud said. "I didn't say anything."

Zack frowned. "Then I guess you're just sleeping with your eyes open." One hand stroked Cloud's hair, and he kept his gaze locked with Cloud's. "He used to do that. Sometimes."

Cloud blinked. "He did? Don't remember."

"Well, sometimes I don't think he was actually asleep, and he just lied to me about it," Zack mumbled, "but sometimes, he muttered things that I don't think he would have let slip if he was awake, that's for sure."

"But I've not said anything."

"Hmm." Zack shifted beneath the blanket; Cloud let him shift and shift him around as much as he wanted to make him comfortable. He had a hard time being comfortable because he was so cold, and the blanket was rough, he could feel all of it rubbing against his skin or his clothes in a way that would make him itchy if he thought too hard about it. He started to bite his lower lip for distraction but Zack shushed him, wiped a thumb along his lips. "Don't do that. Please?"

"Can't help it."

"I know, but gods... Gods." Zack looked around them. "We're lucky we've got even this tonight, but..."

"Where...?"

"Somewhere south of North Corel. We'll pass through the area pretty quickly, get to Costa del Sol, stowaway I guess..."

Cloud blinked. "Going?"

"Midgar. I think." Zack grinned at him, knowing the worry was there even without Cloud voicing it. "Don't worry. I've got my reasons."

"You think?" Cloud said, but poked his friend playfully to take out the bite. Zack tilted his head closer, touched his forehead to Cloud's.

"You'll see. We'll get out of this yet. We'll get you better."

"Better." He shut his eyes, felt as Zack shifted him again, closer, tucked his head beneath his chin. "Better?"

"Yeah. Not so sick. Not so afraid. The hell with the rest of the world. They don't give a shit about us."

He had never heard Zack talk like that before, but he couldn't say anything against it. Zack was right. The rest of the world didn't care about them. Zack had even told him; from what little he had managed to gather from their few stops around towns or farms, no one had any idea about Nibelheim. Sephiroth had died there in an accident, the papers had said. A small squad perished with him. No survivors. They were dead, Zack said.

"Dead," he repeated, from time to time, and Cloud always knew what he meant.

He wasn't sure exactly what they were, himself, other than two runaways. One who could actually run, and an invalid who wasn't even sure where he was or what he was doing more than half the time. Actually, he was surprised he had managed to last so long this time around. Normally, he was aware for only a few minutes at best--

"Zack--" His voice was quiet, trembled, panicked.

"Hm?"

"I think--they're coming--"

***

It was a narrow escape. The Turks filed a report detailing the lead: how the farm family recognized Code Z and Code C from the descriptions given during a radio transmission that night, after already taking them in, how the farm family immediately got in touch with the nearest Shinra base. The Turks had known they were in the area, of course, but hadn't known in which haystack they were hiding. Here, they thought they had them found out, the place completely surrounded, but the escapees seemed to have known they were there before they had even moved in. It was the third time such a scrape had occurred, and Code Z had managed to get out even dragging an unconscious Code C along with him.

Even the Turks were confused. Code C seemed about as useful as a corpse these days. Why the hell did Code Z keep up with him when all he did was slow him down?

They didn't understand. Even Reno didn't understand, and as the reports built up he seemed even more surprised. Zack and Cloud had been friends, he told Rufus, of course he would do anything for him because Zack was that kind of guy. But this? What good would it do him anyway?

Rufus shrugged and posed another question. What if Zack didn't even know what good it would do him? Then he thought about it, and asked Reno if Code Z had undergone any of the Sephiroth Clone procedures, the ones that had actually included the old Commander's cells. Reno had only looked at him with some confusion, then said he would look into it.

He never found an answer.

And of course, Hojo wasn't going to yield any information.

***

He had always remembered that first kiss on the roof from way back when, in some part of his memories. It had always been there, even though he had never dwelled on it. And he had always remembered those few shared, drunken kisses between the three of them, that one birthday, even though the memories had been murkier then and had only grown more clouded.

So each time they touched lips now was like a first time. It was strange because he remembered all the other times, even all the other times it hadn't been with Zack, but that was just kissing and his mind jumped like mad when it was mildly coherent at all, let alone when they--

But he couldn't help it.

Kissing Zack and kissing Sephiroth. Kissing Zack Sephiroth. Kissing. Zack. Sephiroth. Kiss. Applied pressure of the lips. Lips. Mouth. Tongue. Teeth. Gods, leather. Hardness.

The first first time had been one night beside a lake. Zack had just finished washing himself while he had lay on the ground beside the lake, watching him. Then Zack had pulled him into the water so he could wash Cloud off, as well as they could bathe without any soap. They had neither of them had a bath in a long time, let alone a shower. They both reeked. The water had been cold, but the feeling of clean, the smell of clean, the thought of clean that the water had given back was well worth the price of body temperature.

So then Zack had brought him out of the water and he was shivering worse than normal and Zack tried to dry him off so it would help but it hadn't and he hadn't been able to help it--Zack was warm, Zack was always warm, so he had pressed closer to Zack and Zack had finally just said, "Fuck," and then kissed him.

Kissing Zack.

Warmth.

That slight bite of cinnamon. It was still there.

There was a second time, a third time, a fourth time, each time the first time all over again because he kept getting confused which time it really was and when they had or when they hadn't and with who and what and why but the why--it came down to--there was only ever one real reason, other than the other reasons--not just to drive everything else out--not just to drive them out--drive him out--drive himself out--

He shuddered, and cried, and bit, bit Zack but Zack gasped in surprise as well as something else, and suddenly cursed, and Cloud lay exhausted, breathing, shaking, and then crying, even as Zack stared on and walked away and said things and he grew afraid, because he couldn't understand, he should know what Zack was saying but he couldn't--

And then he slipped into a dream, or what he thought was a dream, even though he was in it, and it felt as real as when he thought he was awake.

***

Cloud sat at the base of the tree, chin balanced on his knees. He heard Zack move away, thought he heard something like thunder, but he became distracted by the running of the sunlight on the forest floor like water, splash splash the shadows and then someone stepped in the way of the sunlight. He wanted to frown, but he couldn't get his mouth to work.

"Za--ck." It was the closest he could manage to anything right then.

"Oi, Zack's dealing with a little problem right now. Won't take him long, so I don't got long here, either." The words drifted in and out, like the sea. When had they seen the ocean? Had it been two days ago, or fifty? That last time, when they had stowed away in the train--that had come after the boat and the ocean but before the watery sunlight running over the green forest floor, right? The other person squatted down in front of him, looked at him. He had very cold blue eyes. Cloud shuddered. "Didn't think it was possible for you to look even worse. Holy shit, kid. You and Zack should just come with me after all."

"Za--ck."

"Yeah, that's right."

Cloud dropped his gaze, watching the sunlight again. Splash splash. Fish in the ground? Maybe. Dolphins. What he wouldn't give for a cookie right then. Hunger.

"I guess I shouldn't even bother asking if you're going to raise a fuss, should I? Hell." An arm came around him, a hand hooked under an armpit, pulled him up. Cloud went unresisting, watching a leaf fall, before a blade settled against the skin of his throat.

"Sephiroth," he said, and the one holding him up stared at him.

"Didn't you get the fuckin memo? The bastard's dead."

"Reno." The voice came from up ahead--Cloud raised his own, smiling.

"Zack."

But Zack didn't look at him. His eyes were on the other person. "Reno, you take that the hell away from him. Drop him. If you want me that badly, you take me on yourself, you son of a bitch, but you don't touch him."

"Whoa. More protective than I thought you'd be, considering he's completely off--Zack, look at him. What the hell are you doing with him? Just hand him over, come with me. We might could work a deal. Hell, lasting long as you have--"

"The Shinra's word is shit," Zack growled. "Put him down. There's no negotiations this time."

"I was just going to say that maybe they'd make you a new Commander--"

"Put him down, Reno."

"Zack."

"You gotten a little crazy too, Donovan? What do you think you're saying?" The voice changed in tone, grew darker, colder, so Cloud actually shook. "Your girl that you thought you'd done such a good job of hiding from us? We're onto her again. Without you around to protect her? Piece of cake. How long do you think she's gonna last? Once we turn her over to Hojo? Maybe like this, huh?" The blade came closer to Cloud's throat, pressed just enough to form a thin red line. Cloud couldn't see it but he could imagine it, from all the cuts on his arms, the cuts on his hands, the cuts--Sephiroth had cut him once, in the library, hadn't he? All red, red, or dreams, or--but cold, he was so cold.

"Zack." His voice trembled this time. Sephiroth could cut him all he wanted. He didn't know who this was. He didn't like it. "Zack."

"Guarantee the girl's safety. Get you a nice place to live." The blade eased from his throat, though the cold was still there. The cut itched, but he couldn't raise his hand to scratch at it. "Maybe even put the kid here--motherfu--!"

He didn't know what happened, exactly, only one moment Zack was standing farther away and then suddenly he was right in front of Cloud and the blade was wrenched away from his throat, dropped to the ground before Cloud felt as if the earth was knocked from under him. He fell, thought for a moment he was flying, before the earth came back right beneath him, catching him. It wasn't a gentle catch; he grunted at the sharp pain in his side, and then realized that he was suddenly wet. He had fallen on the blade. At least it hadn't been a straight fall onto the blade--his breath caught, and he turned onto his back, gasping as he did.

Hurt. Sephiroth. Cut. Blade. Sephiroth. Sephiroth Sephiroth Sephiroth--

"Zack... Zack..."

But he couldn't hear what was going on, only saw red, red looming up in blazing fires around him and all he could smell was smoke and burning flesh and gods, no, his mother, she was still inside, hadn't she been running right behind him when the fires started? Where was he, where was his mother, where was--was--

Falling, and lifting, and movement. He felt heavy again, his feet dragging, and Zack shouted but the words made no sense anymore, they were running into the mountains, running after--

The black coat, unfurling behind Sephiroth in the blaze, a jet-black wing--

He cried, sobbed, and fell onto the mountain path, breathing nothing but ash and smoke.

***

He woke with a gasp, winced, realized he had sat up. The pain in his side was enough to cause him to fall back, and he thought that he couldn't tell which was worse--incoherent pain or lucid pain--but pain was pain no matter what, and where was he now?

It was night. Zack was nowhere to be seen, which worried him, but he just lay on his back and looked around, glad that for once everything was what it looked like. There were no shadows that looked like other things, no strange light to cast them, just the unclouded, moonless night. Trees, around them. Running water somewhere to his left. If he closed his eyes and just listened, he could hear Zack's footsteps, the light tread a light rumble in the ground. If he was more awake, he would probably find it frightening again that he could hear it, that he knew it for what it was. He wasn't sure how he knew things, anymore, whether it was something he was taught or something that just showed up in his head from nowhere.

His top had been pulled up, his side bandaged, though when he felt it--the skin there felt new, felt stretched, and turning or twisting much would pull it--but there was no reason for the bandage anymore so he pulled it away, just held it clenched in one hand. He looked down at the same hand, realized it was the one he kept bandaged up. It had been that way ever since they had escaped from--no, it had been that way even before then. After Nibelheim--but before they had left it. Somewhere.

His head ached, so he closed his eyes and let himself rest. Zack's footsteps came closer, and he turned his head, found himself watching as Zack came into clear view.

Zack stopped when he saw him, saw the bandage pulled away from the healing wound. Cloud shook and whispered Zack's name--Zack came closer and dropped the small canvas bag he had been carrying.

"Gods." And it was a painful escape of breath from Zack's throat, as his friend lifted him from the ground, pulled him close. Cloud winced at the initial pressure, but relaxed soon enough afterward. "I would have killed him. I nearly did. Gods. You're still here."

He blinked, raised one hand, groped for Zack's shoulder, used that as a guideline to get his hand up and into Zack's hair. "Couldn't exactly... go anywhere else, right?"

Zack pulled back just enough to look down at him. "You keep going away, Cloud... each time, farther and farther away, and for longer..." He shook his head. "I'm going to lose you. You're going to go away, and you won't come back."

"No--no I won't," and his own voice became panicked. "Won't leave Zack--won't--don't say that--"

Zack's mouth quieted him before anything else could have, and even if Sephiroth had never shown desperation--only that one time when it had been so close to desperation but still not quite--this kiss was desperation, and fear. Cloud knew for a moment that Zack was struggling as much as he was. Then Zack laughed, a shaking laugh, and said that they'd make it anyway, just to spite them--the Turks, the Shinra, all of them--and Cloud hugged him as well as his weak arms would allow.

"Won't leave," Cloud mumbled. "You never left... I'd take you with me... just like you..."

"No, you don't want to be just like me," Zack said, but he was smiling again. "There was someone else you admired, remember?"

"But, love you," Cloud said, and it was the simple truth, just as it always had been with--but--it was different love. He think he must have said that, or said something like it, saw a darkness pass over Zack's face but Zack shook his head, shushed him, and held him close again.

***

Midgar was a grey smear on the horizon. But Zack's smiles had grown. He was more optimistic. Cloud heard every word he said, listened, absorbed everything. He was incapable of giving anything, even when he wanted to.

The window was jammed shut. He couldn't pry it open.

But at least he could still see Zack's smile.

***

Turk Ace # 5, Reno, was debriefed in the medical ward of the Shinra Building. He had little to add to previous reports, only recommended that if the Turks attempted to engage the escapees again, then it would be best to do so in a group. Code Z, he said, was far too protective of Code C, despite the deterioration of Code C's mental capacities, to listen to any forms of persuasion. Force would have to be applied--Code C, because of his failures, would be considered a target. A warning shot. A persuasion. If worse was to come to worst, they could resort to finding and capturing the Ancient girl.

The Turks were ready to mobilize again with their new orders and their new plan, when they received word that their intervention would no longer be necessary.

Code Z was terminated at approximately 1930 hours, in the western badlands surrounding Midgar, by a squad of army regulars.

They had sustained heavy losses, but the threat was considered eliminated.

***

The smaller body still heaved air. The sobbing had died down. Now it hitched and shivered, each jerking movement painful. The sword now at its back weighed it down but it still shook, still breathed.

There was a name in each breath but the name couldn't make it past his lips. Only the air, but not the sounds. Words and voices stirred in the heavy rain, soaking into him, both rain and words, so it was hard to tell what was what or which was his and which was--

***

A day after Code Z and Code C were officially declared terminated subjects of the Sephiroth Clone Project, an incident was reported in the incomplete sixth sector of Midgar. Some unknown entity was reported as breaking through the physical barriers protecting the sector from the badlands. The entity moved under the cover of nighttime and the only surviving trooper from the patrol that encountered it described it as having unique blue eyes and being covered in blood. It wielded a blade, or so the trooper said. The extent of physical damage ascertained from the autopsies confirmed it was a blade, of the quality used by SOLDIER.

But there were no rogue Soldiers--there was no such thing.

The officer in charge of the investigation chalked the attack up to a new kind of monster come in from the badlands. Security within Sector Six was increased, but the monster was never seen again.

***

Standing in a shower. How long had it been? He couldn't remember. He didn't really care.

Tifa had looked so frightened when she saw him, and amazed. Then again, he had been filthy, and tired, and... confused. He didn't think about it. Thinking about it gave him a headache, the kind that forced him down, while everything inside of him wanted to come up. The last job had been difficult. It had been tough. Obviously, he hadn't been paid much for it. He had had next to no gil, only a few coins. Enough for the train ticket.

Train ticket. He rode the train. In the... cargo car? Yes. There had been trouble. A guard had walked in on him, and he had--

He shivered, even in the jet of warm water, and reached for the soap. No shampoo that wasn't floral scented, but then, it was Tifa's bathroom, not someone else's. She said someone might walk in on him in the other. That would be embarrassing, right? She was going to wash his old SOLDIER uniform. He hadn't wanted to give it up, but he knew better than to argue with her. She would have her way. He would never fight with her anyway.

Soap. Lather. It gave him something to do. There was a job tomorrow. He had agreed on it for a small amount of money. That was all right. He would take any job for money. If he built a reputation, he'd earn more. Then he could--

He winced; the pain was so sudden he hadn't realized he'd dropped the soap. He picked it up from the tiled floor, watched the water running down the grated drain.

He froze up.

He had to bite his lower lip to keep himself from screaming, and then his fingers clawed the walls of the shower until that was too much like something else that he couldn't remember, and then someone knocked on the door and a voice--Tifa--asked him if he was all right, and did he need anything.

Answering was easy enough. Of course he was fine. Of course he was all right. He said as much, relaxing as he did.

It felt so good to be off the road for a bit. He'd get back on it again soon, he knew. Something told him so, the pull in his muscles, the ache in his head, the beat in his heart that was not his own.

But for now, at least, while he was here, he would be all right.


End file.
